Silver River
by Link and Luigi
Summary: Everyone's five favorite pirates go to a strange island called 'Silver River' where they each have their own share of peculiar encounters with the natives and get caught in the middle of all kinds of things; including war!
1. Luffy's Day

Luffy's Day

"LAND!!!" I heard Usopp yell.  I sprang up and ran out to the deck as fast as I could to see the land off in the distance first.

"YAAAAAAY!!!" I cheered as I jumped up as high as I could to touch the sky, which was clear and lovely.  I continued to throw myself a party because I deserved one, being the incredibly awesome captain I was who would someday be the Pirate King and be the one to find One Piece.

Then Nami came out of her own personal room.  She had a map!  We all looked at it.  It was a pretty map.  It had colors on it and it was drawn on paper.  I bet Nami drew it.  She's really good at drawing maps.  That's why she's our navigator and she's the best navigator in the world which is good because I have to have the best navigator in the world since I'm going to be the pirate king.

I need the best everything for my ship.  But most of all, I needed a musician.  But I don't have one yet.  But I do have Nami, Zoro, Usopp and Sanji.  Zoro doesn't really have a job on the ship but he can sword fight really well.  And he's the best swordfighter in the world which is good because I'm going to be the Pirate King.  I don't know what Usopp does but he does do some stuff.  Plus, he has a really long nose which is so COOL!  And there's Sanji who's our cook and he can fight too.  He can cook really good meat.  Which reminds me that I am REALLY hungry.

"I'm HUNGRY!!" I commanded since I'm the captain and he's my cook.  "Make me something!"

I assumed he went off to go and cook because I had told him to.  Sometimes he makes meat.  I like it when he makes meat because meat is my favorite food.  Not any specific kind of meat, just meat.  Just as long as it came from a defenseless animal and not a person, I'm okay with it.

I overheard Nami and Usopp talking about NOT docking at the island.  I really wanted my meat.

"But I want to dock on the island." I said.

"Luffy, why don't you go and sit on our personal seat and be the lookout?" Nami suggested.

"ALL RIGHT!!!" I yelled as I ran over to my personal seat.

I watch the sea sitting on our ship.  A seagull is like someone's eyebrows.  Not Sanji's though.  Sanji's eyebrows are an exception to the eyebrow rule.  I bet he only has one though because I've never seen the other one.  But the one he DOES have is very curly.

The calendar means nothing to me.

It's up to me. I feel so wonderful! 

Tremendously huge oceans from anywhere and they all lead to the Grand Line!  Which I want to get to.  And become the Pirate King.  And find One Piece.

"A bird!" I said happily as I saw a bird flying overhead.  It looked really good.  I hoped it wasn't one of those freak big birds that would grab me.  I turned around to tell Nami and Sanji and Usopp and Zoro about the bird but they were all gone.  So I figured I would just catch it and show it to all of them but by the time I had found it again, it was too far away.

But I was still hungry…

Maybe the island had some food.

I had to find someone to go to the island with.

I had to go find Zoro.

He was my first crewmember.

He's a really good swordsman.

So I jumped off my seat and went off to find Zoro.  I looked in all of his favorite sleeping spots and went to our sleeping room last to find him there.  Sleeping.

"Aww…Zoro's sleeping…" I said sadly.

Even though I originally had intentions to wake him up, I figured I'd just wait for him to wake up on his own.  So I wandered around the ship checking to make sure no one needed my help since I was the captain and all.  I wish that all my crewmembers were there to sing a happy song with me.  But we would need a musician for that.

Maybe we would find a musician on this island that we were docking on because I said we had to and since I'm the captain we HAD to!!

I'm really glad I ate the Devil Fruit because I can stretch so much and make lots of funny faces.  I decided to try and find the funniest face I could make and use the ocean to see my reflection.  Just then, while I was in the middle of a funny face, I looked up to see Zoro standing there.

"Come on, Zoro!" I said.  "Come to shore with me!"

"Not right now." He said.

"But I'm hungry!!" I insisted.  "I'm gonna go eat…now."

I stretched my arm all the way to shore so I could catapult myself over to land.  I felt my hand grab a tree and began feel myself being pulled towards the island.

"Come on, Zoro, it'll be fun!" I said, grabbing Zoro as I was launched towards the island.  It's so much fun that I love doing it so much.  I think I should do it more often and it was even BETTER because Zoro was here to have fun with me!!  Though I sort of wished that I had grabbed everyone else too because then we could have all had fun together as a crew as we got on the island.

"We should have grabbed everyone else!" I said when we landed.  "Should we go back and get them?"

"No, that's all right." Zoro replied.  I could understand since Zoro was the first one I recruited so that makes him sort of my first mate which means he has ALMOST as much say as I do but not quite because I'm the captain and I'm going to be the Pirate King and someday find One Piece.

"Where are we?" I asked.  As Zoro began to answer, I couldn't help but be distracted by an enormous woman that was standing behind Zoro.  She was SO big.  She was…I don't know, TWICE as big as Zoro.

"WOW!" I laughed, pointing at her.  "You're huge!!"

She attacked Zoro and me.  But it didn't really hurt so I thought that maybe she was playing with us.  She's so silly and large.  Zoro just went to sleep so I assumed that he didn't want to play so I allowed her to tie us together and carry us away.  It was so much fun!!  She was carrying us!!  I told her how much fun I was having but she didn't say anything!!  But it was still fun!  It's too bad Zoro was sleeping through all of it because it was really fun.

Then she took us to this village where there was about a million trillion and a half humungous large women dancing around.  It was so funny.  So they tied me and Zoro to a tree and I guess that woke Zoro up.

"Luffy, cut that out!" Zoro yelled at me since he was probably cranky that he missed out on all the fun.  Or maybe because he just woke up.  Maybe it was both.

I couldn't help but laugh at the large women dancing because they just looked so very silly!  "It's funny!" I told him.  "But I think it would be funner to get involved!!"

I stood up and spread my arms out to break the ropes.  I didn't want to play that game anymore since we weren't being carried around so I would have to search for a new game.  "Those ropes were uncomfortable!" I told Zoro who was looking slightly confused.

He yelled something, but I saw meat.  "Ooh, food on the table!" I said as I went to go and get the meat since I was very very hungry.

For some reason, Zoro grabbed onto me.  At first, I thought that it was another funny game that he had thought up but I didn't want to play since I wanted meat now.

"ZORO!" I yelled.  "LET ME GO!"

All the large women turned around and looked at us.  "Men slaves escaping!" said the largest of all the large women.  "Get them!"

Zoro let go of me and ran off as I laughed at all the large women.  Obviously we were playing tag and they were 'It'.  At first I thought it was a little unfair to have so many 'It's but whatever!  I wasn't about to let them tag me though so I started running away from them only after picking up some meat and eating it quickly.

It was a fun exciting game until Zoro came back out of nowhere and told me that we had to defeat them all.  I didn't want to because it's not like they were doing anything mean to us so I only watched as he started to fight them.  And, even though he had provoked them, I couldn't let them get hostile to Zoro since he was my partner after all.  I let Zoro do most of the work since he loves it so much but I did make sure that no one attacked him from behind.

When the battle was over, the huge women began to bow to us.  They must have known that I was going to be the King of Pirates.  "Little men much stronger than our strongest warriors." Said one of them.

"Naturally." Said Zoro.  "Come on, Luffy.  Let's get back to the ship."

"No!" said the leader.  "You must help village.  We make you leaders."

Leaders!  That sounded like a lot of fun!  Since I was going to be the Pirate King, I might as well get some practice on being the leader.  "Sounds like fun!" I said, but then thought that I might as well throw in the fact that I was going to be the Pirate King, just for future reference.  "I'm gonna be the Pirate King!!"

"Luffy, you can stay here but I'm getting back to the ship." Said Zoro.

I could have commanded him to stay, but the big women did instead.  "You must stay!  If you defeat strongest warrior, you must be leader!"

"Even if you man." Said the leader of the women.  "And…all beautiful women fall for you."

I sat down and listened as the women explained a story about their Prince and Princess being kidnapped.  Since I was their new leader, I had to do the right thing and find the Prince and Princess.  I didn't need much detail because I knew that I had to help.  "I get it now!" I declared.  "We'll help you!!"

"What?" said Zoro.  He probably wasn't listening because he never listens!  He was probably sleeping.

"They said that the Village of Men are going have a battle to the death with them and we have to help them win." I said.  I didn't want to have my subjects fight to the death with another village, so I wanted to think of an alternate way to settle the argument.  "The only question is…how are we going to do it?"

Let's see…the Prince and Princess are missing.  So, we have to find them.  But…we don't know where they are.  I guess a search of the entire island is in order!  Then again, the island is pretty big so what if we didn't get back in time and the men came and raged war against my people?  If we could somehow buy some more time until the battle then we could make a more thorough search of the island.  But how could we buy more time?  We would have to get someone to stand in for the Prince and Princess.

"I've got it!" I said as my brilliant idea came to me.  I looked at Zoro who was waiting for my command.  "We have to trick the men into believing that we're the Prince and Princess!  I'll be the Prince, and you can be the Princess!"

"What?!" yelled Zoro.  "Not only would I never be a princess but why would we have to be a prince and a princess anyway?!"

"Because the Prince and Princess got stolen!" I said, getting tired of having to explain everything to Zoro just because he was sleeping.

"Why would we bother having to trick them?" Zoro said.  "Why don't we just have the fight?"  Zoro's always trying to find the easy way out.  Just then, I thought of another great idea!  Why couldn't we just go and TALK to the village leader of the Village of Men?

"We'll go to the other village and talk to the men, all right?" I said to the women.  "We're men!  They'll listen to us!"

"Thank you leaders." Said the women as they continued to bow.

I followed my instincts and walked off into the forest as all the women waved me off.  Zoro followed me.  Cause I'm his captain.  And he's part of my crew.  And I'm gonna be the pirate king!

"Luffy, do you even know where you're going?" said Zoro.

That was a silly question.  "Of course I do!" I assured him.  "To the Village of Men!"  I felt like telling him that he should have more faith in his captain.  It's not like I just started walking around randomly.

"And…do you know the way to this village?" he continued.

"I know it's somewhere on this island." I said, wondering why Zoro was so incredibly slow today.  "We'll find it sooner or later."

He didn't say anything else after that, so I figured he finally understood.

It had been a REALLY long time since I had eaten anything.  I wished I had grabbed Sanji on the way to the island so he could cook me something since he's my cook and a really good cook too.  And the King of Pirate deserves the best cook around.

All of this walking was just making me hungrier.  Not to mention the fact that all we were doing was walking and there's nothing fun about walking.  I mean… it's just one step… then the other… then the first one… then the second one… then the first one again… Where's the fun in that?  Someone should think of a way to make walking more fun.

I had talked myself out of walking so I just stopped.

"Why did you stop?" asked Zoro after he had crashed into me.

"I'm bored…" I answered.  "And hungry…"

Zoro didn't exactly respond to me.  He just stood there with an expression on his face that completely threw me off.  Was he confused?  Was he shocked?  Was he depressed?  Could he have been looking at something?  I turned around but nothing of interest was there so I looked back at him but he was still just standing there.  Not doing anything.

All of a sudden, he moved, but for his swords.  It was my turn to stand and wait, wondering what he planned on attacking.  I turned around and looked behind me just in case there actually WAS something there that I had missed the first time around but I turned back around when I heard Nami screaming.  She seemed to be screaming at Zoro so I just watched and didn't say anything because I didn't need her screaming at me too!

"What are you all doing out here anyway?" Usopp asked suddenly which caught my attention because it was a break from Nami's screaming.

"I'm the captain so I should be the one asking you all that question!" I said since it was true and all.

"We're looking for the Village Leaders of the Village of Women." Usopp responded.

"Oh!" I said, realizing at once that we were, in fact, those leaders.  I pointed to myself and Zoro.  "That's us."

"YOU TWO are the village leaders?" Nami said since she was obviously over her anger at Zoro now that she knew he was a village leader.  "How?  WHY?"

"Uh, no, just Luffy, not me." Zoro said.

There must have been a misunderstanding back at the village.  We were both the village leaders because we defeated the strongest warriors and Zoro helped me do that!  He must have just assumed that since I was captain that I was the only village leader when that was definitely not true since he did most of the work anyway!

"No, we both worked TOGETHER to beat the large women!" I clarified for him.

"So you beat up the women and they made you their leaders?" Nami said.

I nodded happily.

"Well, I guess that settles it then." Said Sanji.  "You two can just tell them not to rage war against the Village of Men."

Rage war against the Village of Men?  But the Village of Men was the one raging war against the Village of Women!  Who had told my crewmates this horrible pack of lies? "But the Village of Men is the one that's raging war against US!" I tried to explain.

"Don't say US!" Zoro said.  "You're not REALLY part of their village!"  He obviously had no idea what he was talking about.

"I'm their leader!" I reminded him.

"Whatever it is, just tell them not to go to war." Nami shrugged.  "And that's another conflict solved."

"What about the prince and princess?" asked Usopp.

"We were just going to the Village of Men and DEMAND that they return the princess back home!" I declared.

"But we just came from the Village of Men and they have the same problem." Said Nami randomly.  What could she have possibly been talking about?

"What problem?" I asked.

"THEY don't know where the Prince and Princess are either." Nami replied.  Ah yes.  But they could have been lying.  I knew my people were the honest ones and the men were probably dirty, rotten, stinking liars.  

Just as I was about to voice my opinion, (that everyone would have to follow since I'm the captain) Usopp said; "With our luck, they'll probably be at the top of that mountain."

THAT seemed logical enough!!  I mean, if I were a conniving man, I would definitely hide the Prince and Princess atop some humungous mountain!  At the top, too!  "I bet they are!" I told everyone else as I stretched myself out and grabbed something at the peak of the mountain.  Just as I was about to take off, I also grabbed my crew and then we were off, soaring through the sky which was an experience that never ceased to make me chuckle warmly!!

We landed right on the peak, a perfect landing!  I stood up and immediately started scouting the area.  "I can see the whole island from up here!" I announced to everyone else.  "WOW!  We're so high up!!"

"I ask you again, WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!" Nami yelled suddenly.

I looked at her.  And then at everyone else.  But… everyone else wasn't there.  Where was everyone else?  "Huh?" I said, looking around but my searching was in vain.  "Where is everyone else?"  I looked back at Nami who was only sitting there looking irritated.  Maybe she was wondering where everyone else was too since I had, after all, grabbed them all.  "How come it's only you, Nami?"

"Luffy, if you remember correctly, you were the one who grabbed ME." Nami said.

That wasn't true.  "But I grabbed everyone else too." I said.

"OBVIOUSLY you didn't!" Nami continued.

"But I DID." I assured her since she must have been confused or something.  It's not like I was treating her any more special than the rest of my crew just because she's my navigator.  As a matter of fact, everyone has their own special jobs in my crew.  Nami is the navigator, Sanji is the cook, Usopp ties up loose ends, I'm the captain and Zoro… sleeps all day.  He's my first mate and that's all that matters.  But all we need now is a musician.  Maybe Zoro should learn how to play a musical instrument and be our musician so my crew could have music to listen to.

Speaking of my crew, they were nowhere to be found.  They must have been hiding from me.

Now, I know that my crew is really good at what they do so they must have been really good at hiding too.  I left no stone unturned and also checked over all the ledges to make sure they weren't holding onto the edge just to throw me off.  Then I spotted a piece of ground that looked as though it had been dug up recently so I knew exactly where they were!  I began to dig in that spot because they weren't going to get the best of me!

Then I felt someone hit me on the head.  I turned around to see only Nami standing there.  "Hey, Nami, what did you do that for?" I asked, assuming she had been the one who had hit me.

"They're not going to be in a hole!" Nami said even though she really had no idea.  "You just didn't grab them on the way up!"

"But I thought I did." I said, starting to think that maybe I had missed one or two of them in the process of grabbing 'everyone'.  "I thought I grabbed everyone."

"Oh that's right!" said Nami, slapping her cheeks.  "I just saw them start running down the mountain.  If we hurry, maybe we can catch up with them.  But we need to go now because they're pretty fast."

Aha, so now they were playing tag!  Two could play it that game!  Or four, I guess!  "Not as fast as me!!" I declared as I hopped up and was on their tails as fast as lightning.

I left Nami in my dust but I wasn't going to go TOO far without stopping to wait for her.  Sure, she's our navigator but I don't know how she can run in those shoes of hers.  Maybe if she wore shoes more like mine, she'd be a much faster runner.

Suddenly, I rounded a corner to be faced with a tiny, old rope bridge.  I looked over the edge to see a teeny little river WAY at the bottom that we might land in if we fell off.  I heard Nami come running up behind me and I waited for a minute for her to catch her breath but then I couldn't wait any longer because the longer we stood there, the more time everyone else had time to run away.

"Let's go!" I said, getting on the bridge and beginning to cross it.

"Luffy, is this bridge really all that safe?" Nami asked but she got on it anyway since it was captain's orders.  AND it was fun!

"It's PLENTY safe!" I assured her because the bridge wouldn't break under me.  I'm Luffy.  And I'm going to be the Pirate King.  And there was no way that A BRIDGE was going to defeat me.  It wasn't even a young bridge.  It was a bridge in its old age.  And it probably didn't even have a name or fans or any crewmembers.  I had some crewmembers.  But I needed a musician.  Which reminds me, maybe I SHOULD ask Zoro to take up the flute or the violin or the ukulele.  Yeah!  Definitely the ukulele!  But where were we going to get a ukulele?  Geez, I wish Nami would stop screaming so I could think for a minute.

I suddenly felt myself emerged in water.  I don't like water.  When I'm in water, I can't move.  And I couldn't just then.  And then I felt tired.  And when I get tired, I fall asleep.  And I did.

I woke up a little while later in a boat with one of the large women.  My subjects had come to my rescue!  "That was fun," I said.

Nami gave me a real angry glare that I don't think was justified, especially since I was her captain and she should treat me with more respect seeings how she's just a navigator and doesn't even come close to my status.  Which is captain.  

"Right, Luffy?  Tell them!  YOU'RE the Village Leader!" said Nami suddenly.

Hey, I AM the Village Leader.  "Yeah!" I agreed.

"WELL?!" Nami yelled, shaking me around violently.

I knew it was time for a big decision on my part.  "Let's get those men for capturing the princess!!" I announced.

"NO!!!" screamed Nami.  Though she had no right to undermine my authority because not only am I her captain, soon to be the King of Pirates, but I am the Village Leader.

"Time go to war!" said the woman as she docked her boat.  I jumped out as well, and so did Nami.  But then Nami got this REALLY good idea that since the village women were so large, they wouldn't even notice if she got a foot ride from them.  I wasn't about to let her have all the fun so I grabbed onto the woman's leg and got a free ride all the way back to the village.  It was so much fun being dragged on the ground that I could have probably done it all day but then the woman suddenly bent over and lied down on the ground.  Maybe she thought it was her turn.

But then I stood up to see that every woman in the village was lying down on the ground.  I couldn't give them ALL a foot ride.

I looked at Nami as she started hurrying through the crowd to the middle where none other than Usopp, one of my crewmembers, was!

"How did you find them?!" Nami asked.  I wondered who 'them' was.  But I looked at Usopp and awaited his explanation.

"Easy!" Usopp began.  "I used my superb navigational and tracking skills to cleverly deduct their most likely position and then went to that very spot and, just as I predicted, they were there!"

Usopp was so heroic!  He always seemed to be doing the most courageous things!  "WOW!!" I said, showing my approval as his captain that I was happy that he had found 'them'.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!  WOW!!  WOW!!"

It was so incredible that I had such a brave and strong member of my crew.  I so deserved it though because I was definitely going to be the King of Pirates someday and if I didn't have a brave and strong member of my crew like Usopp, it would just make me look bad.

"It okay, Village Leader?" came a voice.

I looked up.  "Fine with me!" I said.

"It okay, God Usopp?" the woman asked, looking at Usopp.  "Grand feast in your honor!!"

"Of COURSE it's all right!" Usopp said.

A FEAST?!  USOPP IS A GOD?!  A FEAST?!  USOPP IS A GOD?!  "YOU'RE A GOD?!" I yelled, unable to hold back my giddy excitement.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!"  Usopp being a god was great because I was going to be the Pirate King.  But what was even better, we were going to have a feast!  And that meant there was going to be meat!!  What a great day this has been!!

The women all pulled out their musical instruments and began playing them.  All the instruments were so big!!  And there were so many of them!!  I figured I'd ask them if I can have one of them so I can give it to Zoro since he's going to be my musician.

"Can I have this?!" I asked one of the women, pointing to her drum.

"Anything for Village Leader!" said the woman, standing up and handing me her two drumsticks.  Oh wow, I just had a thought.  Okay, so Zoro would be real good at playing the drum with his TWO drumsticks but we ALL know that Zoro can hold one of them in his MOUTH so he could play the drum with THREE drumsticks and it will just be one HUGE drum party!!  And plus, no musician in the world plays with THREE drumsticks so he'll be the best and he SHOULD be the best because I'm gonna be the Pirate King!  I picked up the drum and wandered around, in search of Zoro but I oddly enough could not find him.

The crew of the Pirate King should always be on call.

ESPECIALLY the musician/first mate!!  What if I wanted to hear some music?!  Or get some advice?!  What THEN?!

Just then, everything got really quiet and suddenly, the goofiest looking man in the entire world stood up on a table.  He was about…three feet tall and butt-ugly.  I was about to laugh at him, but he looked like he was saying something important.

The tiny man started talking but I was bored, so I put the drum down and sat on it.  I would have to wait until Zoro wandered up to me since I wasn't going to move until Zoro came to me!  I shouldn't have to go around and look for him.  It's HIS job to appease ME, not the other way around!  Suddenly, all the women started running around crazily.  It was hard to stay in place because they kept knocking into my drum so I had to keep regaining my balance but nothing was going to knock me off this drum!  Nope, not until Zoro came!!

I waited and waited.  Then I began to get somewhat bored and wondering what all the commotion was all about.  I stood up on the drum so I could see a little better but all I could see was a bunch of large women's backs as they were all watching something.  Something amusing then started to happen.  Up in the sky, tiny little people were flying!  And then they were falling!  But it was like popcorn.

I NEEDED to see what was going on over there so I jumped off the drum and then picked it up.  I wasn't about to leave it behind because then Zoro would never get his drum and then he wouldn't be able to play any music for me and be the musician!

When I got to the center of all, I found Zoro, Sanji and Nami all talking!  This was a perfect opportunity to announce my decision that Zoro would be our new musician.  I was sure that this would make everyone very happy since we were so lacking in a musician prior to this day in which I decided Zoro would be the musician.  And everyone loves musicians.

"I got this drum for you so you could be our musician." I told him as I put the drum down.

Zoro looked down for a minute.  He looked like he was mustering up to say something.  And then he did.  "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!" he yelled at me.  I could have shot the question right back at him since I wasn't exactly sure what HE was thinking when he asked that question.  Obviously I was thinking that I wanted him to be my musician and what I say goes since I'M the captain and he's only he musician.  And, as important as the musician may be, the roll of captain is MUCH more important.

"Because you all helped us retrieve our Prince and Princess, we formally invite you to the wedding!!" exclaimed one of the little midgets randomly.

"HURRAY!!" I cheered.  "A WEDDING!!  I LOVE WEDDINGS!!!"  But I guess I missed it because everyone just started partying.  I was confused at first, but then I heard Usopp's voice.

"NO NEED TO THANK ME!!!" he yelled.  "All I want is for you to remember the name; USOPP!!"

"THANK YOU USOPP!!" I said, saluting him.  But then I remembered that Zoro still had to learn how to play his drum.  I turned around to see that he wasn't there anymore.  So I picked up the drum and went off to find him.  Every once and a while, I caught sight of him but he quickly disappeared.  I would have had a much easier time nabbing him if the drum wasn't so huge and heavy, but I knew if I waited long enough, I would finally get the perfect opportunity.

I was distracted then by the buffet table!  There was so much MEAT!  So much meat that I could eat!!  But…I still wanted Zoro to play his drum.  But I wanted meat.  Drum.  Meat.  Drum.  Meat.  Aha!  I could put the meat INSIDE the drum!

After I did that, I realized I broke the drum.  I knew it would be hard to break the news to Zoro, but he would appreciate that his drum was broken for a worthy cause.  But I had to make it up to him by finding another drum for him to play so he wouldn't be upset.  Then I found a tiny man playing a tiny little guitar just for fun!  After watching him for a minute, I figured that if he had a guitar then he would probably have a drum too.

"Do you have a drum?" I asked.

"No." he replied.  "All I have is this."

"Is it a guitar?" I questioned.

"No, it's a ukulele." He answered.  "A man-sized ukulele."

"Oh." I said.  "Can I have it?"

"Well, sure!" he said.  "After all, you did help save our villages!"  He handed me the tiny guitar, and I knew this would make up for me breaking his drum.

Speaking of Zoro, I stumbled across him right then and there just standing there idly by like a fool!  The best way to tell Zoro what had happened to his drum was to just say it straight out, so I did.  "Zoro, look, I filled your drum up with meat!!" I said.

"Whopee." He said.  I waited for him to go into shock so I could comfort him and apologize.  "Okay, Luffy.  The drum is filled with meat."  Well, he was certainly taking it better than I thought he would.  After all, I had broken his drum.  Maybe it didn't quite process in his mind yet that since the drum was filled up with meat, it was broken and therefore he would not be able to play it.

"You can't play it now." I explained to him.  "And I felt a little guilty about… you know, breaking your drum.  So I asked the men if they had any drums!  But… they didn't.  So I got you this instead!"  I gave him the man-sized ukulele.  "It's a man-sized ukulele."

"No ukulele is man-sized." He said.  "ESPECIALLY not this one."

I wasn't sure what he meant, but I did know that I wanted my musician, which was him, to play the main-sized ukulele for me.  "PLAY IT FOR ME!!!" I ordered him as I sat down next to the drum filled with meat and grabbed a piece of it.    "I'll sit here and eat my meat as you play and entertain me since I am your captain and I command it and you are the musician!!"

"I am NOT the musician, nor have I ever been one!" Zoro yelled as he dropped the man-sized ukulele and stomped off.  Oh yeah.  It had finally gotten through to him that his drum was ruined.  I guess he just needed a little bit of quiet time to think it through and realized that a man-sized ukulele was just as good as a drum, if not better!  After all, I know how much Zoro likes manly things and the man-sized ukulele has the word 'man' right in the title!  So Zoro would get over it fast and accept the man-sized ukulele.  I know it.

I sat there and enjoyed my meat.  I had a few drinks too, but not a lot.  The meat was really the upside of the evening.  "Luffy!" I heard someone call me.  I looked up to see Nami.

"Oh, hi Nami!" I greeted her.  "Do you want some meat?  I filled Zoro's drum up with meat."

She raised an eyebrow at me as if she didn't believe me even though the drum was right there in front of her, filled with meat.

"Uh…right." She said.  "We're heading out now.  If you just walk down that path, you'll come across a small boat that will take us out to the ship."

"But I'm eating my meat!" I told her.

"Take it with you!" she urged.

"Right!" I said, wondering why that idea hadn't occurred to me in the first place.  I stood up and picked up the drum and began walking away.  "Aren't you coming, Nami?"

"I have something to take care of first." Nami answered.  "I'll see you all there in a few minutes!"

"Okay!" I answered as I hurried off down the path that Nami had directed me to and ran along it until I found a boat.  I knew it was the right boat because Usopp, Zoro and Sanji were already in it.

"Zoro, you forgot your man-sized ukulele." I said, dropping the drum into the boat.  But then I realized that I had also forgotten the man-sized ukulele back at the village where Zoro had dropped it.  Whoopsies.  Maybe we could repair the drum later after I had finished eating all the meat.

"What's that?" Usopp said suddenly.  I turned around to see Nami walking down the path with the BIGGEST bag of stuff I had EVER seen in my ENTIRE life!!

"IT'S SO BIG!!!" I yelled.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!"

"Just my payment for finding the Prince and Princess and ending the war." Nami replied.

"Hey, _I _was the one who found the Prince and Princess and ended the war!" Usopp said.

"We're ALL going to be sharing it!" said Nami as she dropped the bag into the boat and then got in herself.  I announced myself as the self designated look out so I got out in the front of the boat and… looked out.  I looked to the left, then to the right, then in front, then behind me and then I looked up and down and I looked EVERY direction I could think of.  Even diagonals.

"There's water in the boat!!" Nami yelled as I turned around to see that there was, in fact, water in the boat!  Wee, water in the boat!

"We're too heavy!" Usopp yelled.  "Get rid of the treasure!"

"NEVER!!" yelled Nami.

"All right…get rid of the meat!" Usopp continued as he made a dive for my meat.  I was quicker than him though.

"NEVER!!!" I said threatening.

"We're SINKING!!" Usopp said even though we KNEW that.  "Do we have any other deadweight that we can throw overboard?!"

"How about the cook?" Zoro asked.

"YEAH!!" I yelled.  ANYTHING was better than throwing the meat overboard!  But then I remembered.  Sanji is my cook!  If he's overboard, then I won't have a cook to cook stuff for me!!  "Wait a second!  THAT'S MY COOK!!"  I had to save him!  And save him I shall!!  I leapt into the water, but in that split second before I actually hit it, I remembered that I couldn't swim.  How often I forget!!

I woke up a little while later, not recalling when exactly I had fallen asleep but whatever!

"Ah, Luffy!" Usopp greeted me.  "You're awake!!"

"Yeah!" I agreed since I was awake after all.  Then I noticed that no one was being the lookout.  "I'LL BE THE LOOKOUT!!!" So I ran back to my spot.  Once again, I looked to the left, then to the right, then in front, then behind me and then I looked up and down and I looked EVERY direction I could think of.  And yes, I even looked in diagonals.

We rowed and rowed and it was fun as I continued looking out.  It was dark now as we got closer to the boat.  Zoro, for some reason, was in the water and climbed up the ladder first.  Even though I should have climbed up first since I'm the captain, he had already beaten me to it so I just climbed up second with the drum filled with meat in one hand.  I got to the top to see Zoro standing there as if he was waiting for something.

I waved my hand in front of his face but he didn't flinch.  Then I stepped over Sanji who I did not recall ALSO climbing up the ladder before me but I guess he climbed up really fast because he was so tired since he was sleeping right there.

I took my meet over to my personal seat.  I looked at the island and wondered if we would ever go back to visit it as I ate my meat!  That would be fun!  They had really good meat there.

Usopp came up next to me and watched with me.  It was silent for a minute until Usopp suddenly screamed, "REMEMBER THE NAME, USOPP!!  REMEMBER THAT HE IS YOUR GOD AND SAVIOR!!!"

That reminded me that Usopp was a GOD!!  "Ooh, you're a god?  AMAZING!!"

"Yes, I am a god." Usopp replied.  "I'm surprised that you didn't know that you've had a god traveling with you this entire time."

That hadn't even occurred to me!  What an honor it was to have a god traveling with me!  But I guess it suited me since I was going to be the Pirate King and find One Piece someday.  Hopefully someday soon.  "I didn't!!" I admitted since I wasn't going to lie to a god because he'd KNOW if I was lying.  "That's amazing!!  That's SO amazing!!"

"The Great God and Captain Usopp now must retire to his quarters!" Usopp said as he started marching off.

God…yes.  Captain…no.  That was me.  "I'm the captain." I called after him.  He didn't answer.  But I assumed he heard me.

I didn't stay up for much longer after that.  I was quite content there with my meat watching the night sky.  Actually, I must admit that I lied down and went to sleep right on my personal seat just around the time when all of my meat ran out.


	2. Zoro's Day

Zoro's Day

As my watch was coming to an end, I watched Usopp from the crow's nest as he walked around, procrastinating for as long as he possibly could before he had to come up and relieve me of my duties.  What I also spotted was a small island off in the distance.

Since it was rightfully Usopp's watch anyway, I decided not to scream out to everyone that I saw land.  Rather, I decided to let Usopp do that since he's just so good at it.  You see, while some people have skills like Sanji's cooking, Nami's map making and my greatness at everything I do, Usopp is unusually good at screaming and being annoying.  To each his own, right?

Finally, Usopp made the ascent to the crow's nest to take my place.

"It's about time." I said under my breath as I started climbing down.  I doubt he heard me but I wasn't exactly going for that.  I should have yelled at him or else he would probably do it again.

It was nighttime so it was reasonably dark outside.  I wandered back to our cabin area where Sanji and our brilliant captain were both sleeping.  The hammocks we sleep on certainly build a lot of character, I told myself as I hopped onto one of the empty ones.

No sooner had I lied down when I heard Usopp from outside doing what he does best; screaming.  "LAND!!!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.  Sanji and Luffy immediately sprung awake and ran outside to see the tiny sliver of land off in the distance as if we have never seen such a sight before.  They didn't need me for anything, so I pretended to be sleeping which eventually caused me to fall asleep anyway.

I woke up a little while later and decided to walk out onto the deck while yawning flamboyantly.  I figured that if I yawned loud enough then I could get attention but if that didn't work, I could just announce what a good sleep I had.  I didn't have to do that, though, because Nami appeared to be angry at me.

"Where were you?!" she demanded.  "We've been doing all this work while you've just been sleeping!!"

I nodded to pretend as though I was really listening.

"So what are you waiting for?!" she yelled.  "Put the anchor down!!"

I looked over at our enormous anchor.  "Why is this my job?" I wondered to myself as I easily lifted it and dropped it into the water.  Just then, Sanji came dancing out of his little kitchen area with a platter filled with drinks in fancy glasses, still wearing his horrible pink apron.  There was no way I was going to drink one of those extremely unmanly drinks that he had concocted.  I mean, there was lace around them and everything.  MAYBE I would have had one if they didn't have lace but they DID so I couldn't go near them or else my masculinity might be sacrificed and I can't have that.

"I made some special drinks!" he announced.

"Sanji!" said Nami.  "Where were YOU while we were landing and doing all that work?!"  I knew exactly what was coming…

"Nami-sa~~~n!" said Sanji as his eyes turned into big, unmanly pulsing hearts.  "I made you a drink!"

"That doesn't answer my question!" Nami pointed out.

I decided to turn away at this point because I didn't need to see Sanji dance around like a piece of spaghetti.  "The angry Nami-san is so charming!" he exclaimed.

I was far above this conversation so I figured I could go and lift some immensely heavy weights or something manly like that.

But that was when I crashed into Luffy.  "Come on, Zoro!" he said.  "Come to shore with me!"

"Not right now." I said.

"But I'm hungry!!" he whined.  "I'm gonna go eat…now."

With that, he stretched his arm all the way to shore so I knew he was going to just catapult himself over there like a fool.

"Come on, Zoro, it'll be fun!" he said as he grabbed me with his other arm and then launched himself towards the island.  I didn't have time to react at the time but I knew the moment we landed, I would kill him.  And, as usual, we went a lot further into the island than he had originally planned so we soared overhead for…a while.  All the time I was yelling at Luffy but he was laughing so loudly that he probably didn't even hear me.

When we finally landed, I was surprised that I was not mortally wounded.

"We should have grabbed everyone else!" said Luffy with a huge grin on his face as he patted his clothes off.  "Should we go back and get them?"

"No, that's all right." I said, checking to make sure that all three of my swords were still there and intact.  If they weren't, then I would have had Luffy's head but I let it slide for now since none of them were damaged.

"Where are we?" Luffy asked.

"If you hadn't had just launched us over here then we would…" I began but then I noticed Luffy looking up at something that was behind me.  I turned around to see a gigantic woman that must have surpassed nine feet.  She looked extremely primitive and was wearing a leopard skin loin-dress type thing.  She didn't look to friendly so I figured that if we didn't say anything too offensive then she might not harm us…but I kept my hand on my sword just in case.

"WOW!" laughed Luffy as he pointed directly at her.  "You're huge!!"

I knew this would force the large Amazon woman into hostility so I held off on my yelling at Luffy to turn around and attack her but she had already swung her giant club with spikes coming out of it at us.

I woke up a little while later…tied up.  Luffy and I were both tied to a tree as a clan of huge women danced around a bonfire.  Luffy was probably having the time of his life to the point in which I thought he would die of laughter so, despite how manly I felt at the time, I flexed my muscles and broke all the ropes and cleverly escaped, killing all those in my path with my mighty sword techniques.

Though…I never really got past the flexing part.  Of course, I had PLANNED the ropes to all break but, upon looking down at them, I realized that they were quite the large ropes which were most likely used to tie up the large men of the village.  So, no matter how much I attempted to break the ropes, no amount of muscle flexing was going to do the job.  Plus, my swords had been taken from me so even if I HAD escaped, I wouldn't have been able to kill everyone with my mighty sword techniques.

"Luffy, cut that out!" I yelled at Luffy since he was annoying me ever so much.

"It's funny!" said Luffy.  "But I think it would be funner to get involved!!"

And then, I felt the ropes all around me loosening up.  It was strange… since I hadn't done anything to cause them to do so.

"Those ropes were uncomfortable!" said Luffy, standing up.

"You could have broken them the whole time and you didn't?!" I yelled at him.

"Ooh, food on the table!" said Luffy happily as he strutted off.

I knew the humungous women were going to see him and become insanely angry so I had to at least attempt to stop him.  So I leapt up and grabbed him, trying to hold him back.

"ZORO!" he yelled.  "LET ME GO!"

At the sound of his shrieks, the tribal dance stopped and all the large women turned around in a huff.  "Men slaves escaping!" said the largest of all the large women.  "Get them!"

They all waved their weapons above their heads and started towards us.  I let go of Luffy and decided to save my own skin so I dashed off, keeping an eye out for any sign of my swords because, you know, if I had them right now then I certainly would not be running.  Especially not from a bunch of large women.

It was then that I literally stumbled across my swords.  I picked them up and before even checking to see if their condition was as good as I had left them, I unsheathed them and struck a pose.  If the swords flashing light from sun didn't catch the attention of the women, then my overly loud grunting noises would do the trick well enough.  I wasn't about to strike from behind because real swordsmen just don't do that.

Then I looked up to see that there was no one even there.  I must admit that that got me slightly disappointed because I was all pumped to fight these large Amazon women but they hadn't chased after me.

There were only two possibilities why they hadn't pursued me.  One, they feared my swordsmanship skills and my name was a lot more famous than even I imagined.  Or two, they hadn't bothered to chase me because they were chasing my idiot captain.

No matter how much I wanted the first to be true, I quickly realized that it was actually the second.  So I knew what I had to do.  Go and back him up.

Or…he'd back ME up.

So I made my way back following the loud grunting noises of the large women to find them all chasing Luffy in circles since he was frolicking around while laughing heartily.

I eventually got him to focus and, working together, we eventually beat all the large women.  Then, all those left conscious began to bow to us.

"Little men much stronger than our strongest warriors." Said one of the large women who I could only assume was the leader because she seemed to be the most important…and the largest.

"Naturally." I said.  "Come on, Luffy.  Let's get back to the ship."

"No!" said the leader.  "You must help village.  We make you leaders."

"Sounds like fun!" said Luffy, throwing his hands up in the air.  "I'm gonna be the Pirate King!!"

All the large women gasped and only continued to bow.  I knew that Luffy's IQ was probably lower than anyone in this entire village.  "Luffy, you can stay here but I'm getting back to the ship."

"You must stay!" cried all the large women.  "If you defeat strongest warrior, you must be leader!"

"Even if you man." Said the leader of the women.  "And…all beautiful women fall for you."

She gestured over at a hoard of what looked like the most hideous women of the village.  I mean…I wasn't even sure if they were all women.  They all looked more like horrible ugly apes that hadn't bathed in weeks.  Before I knew it, the village leader launched into an excruciatingly long story explaining something complicated and important but I chose not to listen because not only could she hardly speak properly, but…it was a story.  And I hate stories.

"I get it now!" said Luffy suddenly.  "We'll help you!!"

"What?" I said.

"They said that the Village of Men are going have a battle to the death with them and we have to help them win." Luffy answered.  "The only question is…how are we going to do it?"

It LOOKED like he was thinking for a few minutes.  But for all I knew, he was looking at a bird or something…and I got the feeling that he was.  "I've got it!" he said suddenly.  "We have to trick the men into believing that we're the Prince and Princess!  I'll be the Prince, and you can be the Princess!"

"What?!" I yelled.  "Not only would I never be a princess but why would we have to be a prince and a princess anyway?!"

"Because the Prince and Princess got stolen!" Luffy said in what sounded really close to a whine.

I guess if I had listened to the story, I would have understood better.  But, I have no regrets so I didn't let it bother me.  "Why would we bother having to trick them?" I said.  "Why don't we just have the fight?"

Luffy looked at the Village Leader.  "We'll go to the other village and talk to the men, all right?" he said.  "We're men!  They'll listen to us!"

"Thank you leaders." Said the women as they continued to bow.

Luffy walked off in some random direction and I followed him.  I don't know why… but I figured my say in where we were going was really no better than his.  I didn't know if we were actually going to talk to the Village of Men and I knew for CERTAIN that we weren't going to solve any problems.  Not that I was refusing or anything, but we usually can't get anything done peacefully.  It's just the way we are.

"Luffy, do you even know where you're going?" I called to him since the forest started to get thicker.

"Of course I do!" said Luffy.  "To the Village of Men!"

At first, I was about to nod and ask myself why I had doubted him when I realized that this was Luffy.  "And…do you know the way to this village?" I pressed.

"I know it's somewhere on this island." Said Luffy.  "We'll find it sooner or later."

I didn't know how to express my frustration without seriously harming Luffy so I kept it bottled up inside of me until I could explode it all at once later.  Maybe at a more important time…like during a battle since we so frequently encountered those.

We hadn't been walking for longer than a few minutes before Luffy suddenly just stopped.  I hadn't realized he stopped at first and actually crashed into him because he had just STOPPED without warning.

"Why did you stop?" I asked.

"I'm bored…" he whined.  "And hungry…"

It was at times like these that I questioned what I was doing there with Luffy, following him around.  I especially wondered why I had agreed to be part of his crew since the very beginning.  It was probably because I was foolhardy at the time and did not realize what I was getting myself into.  But it also could have been a spur of the moment thing so it was just BAM and I was part of the crew and there was nothing I could do about it now since I always keep my promises.

Just as I began to wish for other company, (even if it was bad company) I heard footsteps behind us.  I put my hand on one of my swords to get ready as the hurried steps drew closer.  When they became uncomfortably close, I soon realized that it wasn't just coincidence that they were going in the exact same direction as us because, after all, we weren't currently going anywhere so clearly we were being followed.  And usually when we're being followed, it's not a good thing and there's bound to be a battle on the way.

Not that I wasn't itching for a battle ANYWAY…

Upon turning around with my sword drawn, however, I was faced with Nami, Usopp and Sanji who all leapt back in fear of my power.  I was disappointed that it wasn't someone who I could prove I was better than, but at least I wasn't going to be alone with Luffy anymore.  There's only so much time I can stand with him.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" screamed Nami angrily.

"I was just making sure…" I began.

"YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME!!!" Nami interrupted.

I figured it was pointless to make any excuses so I only sighed and shook my head as she continued to rage.

"We're looking for the Village Leaders of the Village of Women." Said Usopp suddenly so I assumed there must have been conversation that I missed.

"Oh!" said Luffy.  "That's us."

"YOU TWO are the village leaders?" said Nami in a tone of disbelief.  "How?  WHY?"

I didn't want people to remember me as the village leader of the Village of Women.  "Uh, no, just Luffy, not me." I corrected.

"No, we both worked TOGETHER to beat the large women!" laughed Luffy.

"So you beat up the women and they made you their leaders?" Nami said.

I shrugged and nodded.

"Well, I guess that settles it then." Said Sanji randomly.  "You two can just tell them not to rage war against the Village of Men."

"But the Village of Men is the one that's raging war against US!" said Luffy passionately.

"Don't say US!" I told him.  "You're not REALLY part of their village!"

"I'm their leader!" Luffy said since he obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

"Whatever it is, just tell them not to go to war." Nami shrugged.  "And that's another conflict solved."

"What about the prince and princess?" asked Usopp.

"We were just going to the Village of Men and DEMAND that they return the princess back home!" Luffy declared.  I slowly inched away from Luffy so it didn't look like I was associated with him even though everybody knew very well that I, most unfortunately, was.

"But we just came from the Village of Men and they have the same problem." Nami said.

"What problem?" Luffy asked stupidly.

"THEY don't know where the Prince and Princess are either." Nami explained.

Then Luffy appeared to go into deep thought again and I was half expecting him to just announce that we would pretend to be the Prince and Princess again.

"With our luck, they'll probably be at the top of that mountain." Usopp whined, pointing at a gigantic mountain that stood in front of us that I… hadn't noticed before.

With our luck, I agreed to myself.  I didn't agree out loud because I didn't want to agree with Usopp even though I DID…I just didn't need it to be public.

"I bet they are!" said Luffy as he stretched an arm toward the mountain.  He began to sweep his arm towards us and, since I knew him all too well, I knew that if he began to stretch then he was going to grab onto the closest person to him and take that person with him.  I didn't want to be that person this time, so I quickly dove to the ground but in the process knocked Sanji over who was just staring absentmindedly at the mountain.

I heard a few screams and then looked up to see that everyone was gone and now only the cook and I remained.

"Zoro, that was a little weird." Said Sanji.

"Yeah, I know." I said.  "The Prince and Princess on the mountain?  Where would he get a ridiculous idea like that?"

Then I realized that Sanji was looking incredibly uncomfortable and then I noted the fact that I was still lying on top of him.  Then I began to feel a bit uncomfortable too as I got off of him.

"That was weird." Sanji repeated.

"You already said that." I said angrily.

Then followed the most awkward silence I have ever experienced in my entire life.  It was even more awkward than the time I lost Mihawk and started crying.  Luckily, no one remembered that.  They just remembered my valiant efforts to defeat him and just how close the ending result was and the next time I faced him, I would certainly be the victor.  Oh no, he won't be beating me with that tiny sword again.  He won't even pull it out next time.  I won't LET him pull that offensive tiny sword out next time.  Next time.  Next time, I would beat him.

"Hey, where's Nami-san?" said Sanji suddenly.

I found myself very disoriented after Sanji had interrupted my random trail of thought that I'm not quite sure how I got into in the first place.  That's right, I started thinking about awkward moments and then thought of Mihawk and how I would defeat him.  Then there was that disgraceful tiny sword that he felt he needed to use!  When I defeat him, I will be the best swordsman in the world and I will be able to keep my promise to Kuina.

"Where's Nami-san?" Sanji repeated.

Why did he feel a need to repeat himself?  I had heard him the first time.  It's not like I was stupid or anything and needed to hear the same thing more than once for me to understand it.  He just didn't understand because he didn't even come close to comparing to the greatest swordsman in the world who will someday be me.  He had also never been tossed aside by a tiny sword.  Oh how that tiny sword offends me.  If I had it right here, right now, I would throw it as far as I could!  And when I become the greatest swordsman in the world, I won't go walking around with a tiny sword no matter how pathetic my opponents are and how great I am!

"Where's EVERYONE for that matter?" Sanji said.

What is with this stupid cook and asking so many questions?!  "What do you want from me?!" I demanded.  "Shut up you stupid cook!"

"I missed everything when you assaulted me!" he said even though his argument held absolutely no ground.  "Where did everyone go and why is it only you here!"

"Hey, I saved you from being catapulted into the sky by our captain." I said but that was the only answering I was going be doing around here.  He had already gotten more answers than he deserved.

"Catapulted into the sky?!" he gasped.  "Nami-san?!"

"Yeah, they went to the top of the mountain." I said, pointing to the mountain.  I knew what I had to do.  I had to go and find them since they were most likely getting themselves into all kinds of trouble.  And since Nami and Usopp had only Luffy to protect them, I knew I had to make it quick.  I began to make my way to what looked like a pathway up the mountain.

"Hey, where are you going?!" the cook yelled, running after me.

"Where does it look like I'm going?" I said.

"So we're just going to blindly make our way up the mountain?!" he said.

"We KNOW they're up there…" I said, glaring at him for doubting me.

"It's a big mountain!" he continued.

I wasn't even going to dignify that comment with a response.  Of course it was a big mountain and I didn't need him telling me that.  He's just lazy that's all.  The more stalling we did thinking of some silly plan, the less time we had to search for the other three.

If I was stuck with ANYONE else, I would be all right.  At one point, he even kicked me in the back of the head but I didn't respond well to attacks to I tried to make it look as though I didn't feel it and then when he did it again, that was just going WAY too far so I turned around to strike him to discover that he was standing a few yards behind me.  So what did he do?  Kick me and then run away fearing my wrath?  Wimp.

"If you had LISTENED to me then—" he started but I knew he was going to say something stupid.

"Shut up," I told him as I went to turn around but came to discover that I couldn't move my legs.  When I looked down, I came to the realization that I was currently in quicksand up to my knees.

"There you go." Said Sanji as he began pointing to a sign that ANYONE could have missed.  "Look, there's only a sign right here!  And I tried to point it out at you and when that didn't work, I tried kicking you but that didn't work either so I did it again but you just kept walking and walking!"

"I've been in worse situations than this." I said.  It wasn't a lie, but just because I had been in worse situations didn't mean that I knew quite how I would be getting out of this one.

"I don't know if I want to help you." Sanji said, crossing his arms.

"I don't want your help." I said and that wasn't a lie either.  Just because I didn't want his help, didn't mean that I didn't NEED his help.  But I wasn't going to make that known until it was absolutely too late for me to possibly do anything to help my situation because I would like to avoid anything glorifying to the cook that wasn't concerning…cooking.

"How do you plan on getting out of it?" said Sanji as he hopped across a few stones as if he was just THE SMARTEST person on earth and was just too good for walking right through the quicksand like a real man.

"Simple." I said, trying to ignore the fact that the quicksand was almost up to my waist at that point.  I tried to concentrate more on thinking of a 'simple' plan that would aid me in escaping before I had to ask the cook for help.

"I could help you." Sanji said.

"I don't need it." I replied.

"It would be faster and easier and less life threatening if you let me help you now." Sanji continued.

"If you've got nothing to do, why don't you go and cook something?" I said as I began looking at my surroundings that would help me escape.  I couldn't really reach anything besides… quicksand or… the cook.  But I would rather die than get his help or pull him in to save myself because a swordsman would never do something like that.  Especially one that is aspiring to be the greatest swordsman in the world.

"You know," Sanji said.  "If you're not going to take my help, you should at least TRY and get out."

Of course I was trying to get out!  What did he think I was doing?  Just standing there thinking?  What could I possibly be doing besides escaping as the quicksand crept up to my shoulders.

The cook sighed and then just… lit a cigarette as if that wouldn't poison my lungs.  I work out every day so that I can be in tip-top shape and I didn't need him ruining all my dreams by making me develop a horrible cough.

"Put that out right now." I ordered him.

"What?" Sanji said, pretending he didn't know what I was talking about.

"Stop smoking." I clarified.  "Forever."

"I ALWAYS smoke, it's never offended you before." Sanji said.

"Well maybe I'm just irritable because I'm neck deep in quicksand and the only other person around who could possibly do ANYTHING to help me is just standing there smoking, acting as though no one is around sinking in quicksand and is, instead, filling that person's lungs with second hand smoke."

"Is that a demented way to ask me for help?" Sanji said with a raised eyebrow.

I decided that now was a good time to just leap out and do a flip, landing perfectly and show him that I was okay the whole time and was just misleading him so he could realize just how useless he actually is.  Unfortunately, there would be no leaping or flipping considering I was neck deep in quicksand.  He just stared at me, noting my situation and not doing anything about it.  It got to the point in which I was GLAD when I was completely submerged in the quicksand so I wouldn't have to look at him anymore.

Though, I couldn't really look at anything anymore.  Or…breathe for that matter.  Just as I was about to escape, I felt something grab me by the collar and then begin to pull up to the surface.

Sanji had pulled me out of the quicksand and onto a hard surface.  "It's about time you rescued me." I said after I had caught my breath.

"Aren't you even going to thank me?" Sanji asked.

"I never asked for your help." I reminded him, standing up and brushing myself off.  "You're the one who decided to do something about it.  I was going to be just fine without you.  Now stop wasting time because we have to get to the top of the mountain."

Sanji obviously wised up because he didn't do any more stupid things on our journey all the way to the top of the mountain.  Though, I thought it to be somewhat strange that the men built their village at the top of the mountain considering it was quite a climb.

"Welcome to the Village of Men?" I read, taking special heed to all signs.

"There are two strictly male villages?" Sanji said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Nami-san, Usopp and I have already been to the Village of Men and it wasn't at the top of the mountain." Sanji said, looking around.  "Hey, why is the mountain over there and we're over here?"

I looked over to where he was looking to see the mountain.  "Hm… we seem to have gone astray…" I concluded.

"We got lost." Sanji said.

"Don't say it like that!" I commanded.

"How could you have possibly NOT noticed when we went DOWNHILL on our way down the mountain?!" Sanji yelled.

I was about to bow my head in shame when I realized that he hadn't noticed either.  "You didn't notice either." I said.

"I just didn't say anything."

"Liar." I said since he most definitely was.  Just then, I heard many, many approaching footsteps.  I turned around to see a swarm of small, midget dwarf type creatures in a big mob out of the village.  I didn't know if they were hostile or not but any large number of tiny natives never really proved to be friends.  And, to put it simply, I just didn't like them.

"Are you going to back me up or are you just going to stand back and watch like last time?" I asked Sanji as I reached for my swords.

"Huh?" was all he muttered as one of the midget people stepped forward.

"Representative of the Village of Women, who is this strange woman you are traveling with?" he asked.

I wondered if I had heard him correctly.  I looked behind me to see if there was any 'Representative of the Village of Women' with 'a strange woman' because, obviously, they better not be referring to the cook and I.

"Ah, well, this strange woman just so happens to be the Village Leader of the Village of Women." Sanji said, pointing to me.

I was absolutely appalled.  What?  Me?  Woman?  I don't think I've ever been mistaken for a woman before IN MY LIFE… and also never thought that I would have this issue with being angry at someone for calling me a woman or mistaking me for a woman.  There seemed to be some sort of mutual agreement that I was a woman…that I had not been informed of.

I conjured up my most masculine voice as to prove that I was not a woman even though my manliness should have been obvious enough.  "What are you talking about?" I said.

"How did this woman become leader of the Village of Women?" asked the tiny man.  "She is very small."

"It is clear because she is the most beautiful of them all!" said another one of the tiny men.

"You're right!" said a third.  "Her beauty far surpasses any of the others!  We should have our prince marry HER!  I'm sure she'll be very good at conceiving large and masculine men as well as some petite, feminine women."

All right, this was going too far.  I reached for my sword to smite the little cretins when I was kicked by Sanji.  I turned to take my anger out on him instead, but he pulled me aside out of earshot of the little men.  "Zoro, this is the Village of Men."

"Yes, I noticed." I answered.  "The village of the very tiny and very insulting men."

"You probably look different from their perspective." Sanji said.

"But they've all seen women before," I pointed out.  "After all, there's a village compiled entirely of women just on the other side of this island!"

"Yes but…they are very large…and very hideous…" Sanji said.

"ENOUGH!!" came the booming voice of one of the tiny men.  Sanji and I turned around to see him pointing his laser gun at us.  "We are through with negotiations!"

"Were we negotiating?" said Sanji, making matters worse even though he had a point.

"You have failed to return our prince to us!" he said, ignoring Sanji.  "So, as irresistible as your beauty may be, since you are the leader of the village we are to rage war against, we have no choice but to do this!"

Then he raised his gun.  A gun was really the only thing that I didn't know how to deal with.  If I were the best swordsman in the world, I would be able to use my sword to deflect the bullets back at the shooter or at least away from myself.  But, currently, as only the second best swordsman in the world, I could not do that.  I might be only the third best swordsman, or even the fourth.  But I'm pretty sure I'm in the top ten range.  Top seven range.  Top five.  Definitely.

The man told us not to move and I got the feeling that even if I knew how to deflect the bullets, his laser gun wasn't loaded with bullets.  It was probably loaded with lasers.  And no one really knows what a laser can do to you.  They might just disintegrate you and I don't think even _I _could recover from something like that.  Plus, I wasn't about to let myself die for the Village of Women.

So a few other men brought stepladders and put them up next to us.  Sanji seemed to have the same idea as I did because we both allowed the men to tie us both together, back to back.  I didn't mind all that much because I knew we could easily escape later, but once they took my swords, I took it personally.

But by that time, we were already tied up and thrown into a cage.  They hoisted us above their heads and carried us down the path, most likely on their way to the Village of Women.

I waited for Sanji to do something.  He could have easily just kicked his way out of the cage, right?  I mean, his legs were completely free.  I tried clearing my throat a few times but he didn't seem to take the hint.  You'd think someone who excels at kicking like he does would always be thinking of ways they could get out of bad situations while using their kicking abilities.  I didn't want the men to just HAVE my swords like they did at this very moment and Sanji OBVIOUSLY didn't care at all.

I didn't want to say anything because that would mean that I was practically asking for his help.  So I only waited for it to occur to him to kick his way out and then we could retrieve my swords and then we wouldn't have to be tied together anymore.

All of a sudden, the movement stopped.  I looked ahead of us to see that we had entered the Village of Incredibly Large and Manly Women, of which I am the leader.  Though I did not know exactly how it happened, or why and CERTAINLY did not WANT it to happen, I was and at that point, I really couldn't change it.  And I also was, apparently, the most beautiful woman in this village and I definitely didn't want that.  I'm not even a woman.  That's not saying much about the women of this village.  Because I am SO manly.

"We have come to sacrifice your Beautiful and Fair Village Leader and Village Representative!" said one of the men, stepping forward.

"No need!" said Nami as she pushed her way through the crowd of women who were all gathered together having some sort of party.  "We found the Prince!  You don't have to go to war!"

"I'm right here!" said a tiny man as he stepped forward as well.

"Well good!" exclaimed the mob of tiny men.

Suddenly, the cage around me just sort of…exploded.  All the men gasped and scattered like roaches under a light.

"NAMI-SAN!!!" yelled Sanji at the top of his lungs as he stood up, so my legs were pointing up in the air.  "I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THESE HORRIBLE TINY MEN!!!"

He suddenly jumped down and I could feel myself being violently shaken around.  While I couldn't see what was going on, I could see straight up and I could see a bunch of teeny little men fly up into the air.  The stupid cook was kicking them high into the air.  AFTER peace had been declared.

"STOP DOING THAT!!!" I tried yelling at him but he was in that mode that he gets in where he can see nothing because of the hindering pulsing hearts he has in front of his eyes.

Just when I thought I would have to do something drastic, I felt a hard bap on the top of my head, and suddenly the cook fell to the ground and so did I.  I probably crushed all his internal organs too, but he deserved it for being such a lunatic.

But what I DIDN'T deserve was to be hit or knocked to the ground.  Of course, Sanji broke my fall but I still didn't deserve to be hit.  So I looked up to see Nami standing over us looking irritated.  At least it wasn't a tiny man.  That would have just been a little TOO degrading.

"WHAT are you doing?!" she demanded, as if it was my fault.

"What am _I _doing?!" I yelled at her since she had no ground to stand on whatsoever.  I got to my feet but still had that stupid cook on my back AND I was still tied up so I felt as though no matter what I said, I wouldn't be taken seriously.  "I TRIED to get him to stop!"

Just then, the tiny man who had been hanging out with the women approached me.  "Although my heart belongs to Ung, I must say that you are much more beautiful." He said.  Who was this man?  What right did he have to say something like that to me?  Why is he so small?  Now NO one was going to take me seriously.  I was so angry that I couldn't even speak.  I would rather him come over and condemn us to some underground dungeon for punting half of his people which I would gladly take the blame for in exchange for this event never happening.  Because now Nami was looking at me weirdly.  And Usopp.  And I bet that stupid cook was laughing at me behind my back.  Literally.

I bet Luffy was going to…oh, here he comes.  He was probably going to say something stupid.  I knew for sure that he was going to say something stupid, especially since he was carrying an enormous drum.

"I got this drum for you so you could be our musician." Luffy explained, placing the drum in front of me.

Normally, I would laugh at his stupidity.  But not this time.  He was going too far.  There was no way I was going to be a musician.  I have my job on the ship!  I preserve my strength so I can fight in battles!  If I was the musician…wait, why am I even speculating?!  I don't NEED to justify a reason for not being the musician!!

"WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!" I yelled at him.

Suddenly, I felt a weight drop off my back.  I turned around to see that one of the tiny men had cut our ropes and was now handing me my three swords.  I don't get it.  Half of them had just been kicked sky high and now they were acting as though none of it had even happened.

"Because you all helped us retrieve our Prince and Princess, we formally invite you to the wedding!!" exclaimed one of the men.

I was going to say no, since we had already spent longer than I had hoped on this island, but someone else said yes.  Someone…I don't know who…they all sound the same.  Especially when I'm not listening.

The wedding was actually really short.  They lined up one of the men and one of the women right then and there and simply declared that they were now married and the Villages were joined.  We could have left just then, but there was a party afterwards and not only was I the Village Leader AND the most beautiful woman there, but no one else was going back to the ship and there would have been no point in just waiting for them there and turning down a party.

And I swear, Luffy chased me around that entire party with that drum, insisting that I play it.  No matter how much liquor I consumed, I was never going to play that drum.

At one point, Sanji actually asked me to dance.  I knew he was just making fun of me, since he called me a 'lady', so I told him that I would rather commit Seppuku right then and there so he went off and drank some more and sat in the corner.  Probably crying.  Actually, undoubtedly crying.

Then there was the fact that I was proposed to at least four times.  By men.  I found that these men had a very easy time walking up to a random person they just met and asking them to marry him.  Was everyone in the entire world trying to get me to question my sexuality preference tonight?  It wasn't going to work.  I'm still manly.

That was when Usopp walked by.  I saw him look at me.  He winked.  Usopp winked at me.  He made gestures.  He was coming onto me.  I pulled out one of my swords and pointed it at him.  He seemed to get the message without me having to say anything because he was quick to leave after that.

"Zoro, look, I filled your drum up with meat!!" said Luffy, coming out nowhere as he dropped 'my' drum down on the ground to show me that, sure enough, it was filled with meat.

"Whopee." I said, trying to sound as UNenthusiastic as possible.  What was I supposed to say?  What would YOU have said?  "Okay, Luffy.  The drum is filled with meat."  He was probably expecting me to say, "LET'S SHARE THE MEAT, LUFFY!!" or even better, "DARN!!  I CAN'T PLAY IT NOW!!"

"You can't play it now." Said Luffy, reading my mind.  "And I felt a little guilty about…you know, breaking your drum.  So I asked the men if they had any drums!  But…they didn't.  So I got you this instead!"  He then handed me a tiny guitar that was about the size of my palm.  "It's a man-sized ukulele."

"No ukulele is man-sized." I told him.  "ESPECIALLY not this one."

"PLAY IT FOR ME!!!" Luffy exclaimed as if I had marveled at the gift.  "I'll sit here and eat my meat as you play and entertain me since I am your captain and I command it and you are the musician!!"

"I am NOT the musician, nor have I ever been one!" I said, dropping the ukulele on the ground and stomping off.

It was then that I came across Nami.  "We're going to be leaving soon." She said.  "We're going to try and slip away unnoticed as to not make a big deal about it all."

"I'll meet you at the ship." I said immediately, pushing past her.

I started to make my way towards the ship when I saw Usopp practically hunched over onto the ground with Sanji's body on top of him.  At first, my initial reaction was that Sanji was molesting Usopp, but I soon realized that Sanji was, in fact, unconscious and Usopp was most likely just trying to carry him back to the boat and failing miserably.

So, to save him anymore embarrassment, I grabbed Sanji and lifted him off of Usopp.  Of course I had to make him feel stupid by carrying Sanji with only ONE hand above my head but he didn't even thank me.  Not at all.  I could have just left him there with his struggling but I was a nice enough guy to help him.  Well, see if I ever do that again.

Usopp suddenly jumped into this little rowboat thing.  At first, I just kind of looked at him but then I looked out to see that our boat was a little way of the coast so we clearly had to row out there.  Even though I SWEAR I put the anchor down this morning.

I dropped the cook in the boat and got in too.  I guess we were just waiting for Nami and Luffy to get back.

Then Usopp had the nerve to start whistling.  "Hey, stop that." I commanded him.

"This is no way to apologize to me!" said Usopp, something that I wasn't exactly expecting.

He couldn't tell by the confused look on my face that I didn't know what he was talking about so I had to say, "What?"

"Admit it, if I hadn't been so limber then you surely would have taken my head off!" he declared.

I didn't quite understand what he was talking about.  If he was referring to the incident at the party in which I drew a sword on him for coming onto me then he had no ground to stand on.  I was in complete control of my sword and there was no possible way I would have ever cut his head off, even if he had lunged into it I would have been ready to move it in time.  I just wanted to freak him out a little bit so he would think twice about coming onto me next time.

"What?" I said to him.  Maybe I was wrong.

He didn't have time to answer because Luffy suddenly came out of nowhere carrying his…or _my, _stupid drum.  "Zoro, you forgot your ukulele." He said, handing me the ukulele from the Village of Men.

He put the drum that was still filled with meat in the boat.  Then he got in as well.  Before he could say any other stupid things, Nami came down the path carrying a giant bag of what I could only assume was treasure.

I lounged back, but something was keeping me from getting comfortable.  It was something I was lying on.  I leaned forward and looked behind me to see a set of oars.  I picked them up and held them for a minute, waiting for someone else to offer to take at least ONE of them.  No one really said anything because I think they were all pretending not to notice me in order to get out of doing any rowing.

Nami got in the boat and I knew at that point that they weren't going to be helping me.  So, scornfully, I put both oars into the water and rowed all by myself.  But, I guess the upside of this was that I was getting good exercise for my arms.

"There's water in the boat!!" Nami screamed abruptly.  I looked down to see that there was about three inches of water inside our boat.  Then I looked at the side of the boat to see that it was practically in the water because of all the weight that was in the boat.  I guess I had been preoccupied with rowing all by myself to notice.

"We're too heavy!" Usopp yelled in a panic.  "Get rid of the treasure!"

"NEVER!!" yelled Nami.

"All right…get rid of the meat!" Usopp suggested.

"NEVER!!!" yelled Luffy in the same voice as Nami.

"We're SINKING!!" Usopp stated the obvious.  "Do we have any other deadweight that we can throw overboard?!"

Deadweight…I looked at the cook.  He was weight.  And he was practically dead.  He was deadweight.

"How about the cook?" I asked.  I didn't expect them to agree, but Nami and Luffy yelled, "YEAH!!" so I shrugged and heaved Sanji overboard.

"Wait a second!" said Luffy, having another one of his mood swings.  "THAT'S MY COOK!!"  Stupidly, he leapt into the water as well.  Everyone who knows Luffy KNOWS that he can't swim and it didn't look like Nami or Usopp were going to do anything about it, big surprise there, so I took it upon myself to save his life.

I swam down and down and down until I finally saw Luffy on one side of me and Sanji on the other side of me.  So I grabbed them both and swam back to the surface.  I don't know why I had thrown Sanji overboard.  It was one of those things that SEEMED like a good idea at the time, but I look back at it and want to kick myself because now I was all wet.

"Ah, a beautiful green haired mermaid has saved me!" said Sanji foolishly.

This was about the tenth time I had been referred to as a woman today.  As drunk as he may be, my patience with him was already short anyway so I punched him on the head JUST hard enough to knock him unconscious again, but not quite kill him.

Nami and Usopp actually helped in hoisting Luffy back onto the boat but as I handed them the cook, they kind of just… stopped.  As if their job was done.

"Actually, Zoro, we can't take anymore weight." Said Nami.  "This is perfect.  If you and Sanji just swim then we won't sink!"

"But he can't swim!" I pointed out.  "He's unconscious!"

"Well whose fault is THAT Mr. Mermaid?!" said Nami.

I didn't actually mind swimming, what I minded was having to carry Sanji AND swim.  "How about one of you switch places with him?" I said to Nami and Usopp.

"I have to row!" Usopp declared, grabbing the oars.

"And I'm a lady." Said Nami.  "And I'm wearing a white shirt!"

I glared at her.  "So am I." I said.

"You know, Zoro, when a guy wears a tight, wet, white shirt, it's okay!" Nami began.  "As a matter of fact, it's great!  But when a girl wears a tight, wet, white shirt…"

"I get it!!" I interrupted her, not wanting to really hear anymore.  "But I'm sure you can take Sanji onboard, he doesn't weigh very much!"

"Are you not tough enough to carry him?" said Nami.

"What?" I said, utterly in shock that anyone would say something like that to me.  Especially someone in her position, whose life I have saved more times than I can count.

"Well, here I was THINKING you were a tough guy and I WAS admiring how strong you were to row all by yourself without being fatigued AT ALL, and then go and save Luffy and Sanji but…" she started but then sighed.  "I guess it was all an act."

"I don't act." I told her.

"Fine, just hand us Sanji, you don't need to carry him if your tired." She said, reaching a hand down.

"No," I said.  "I'm not tired at all.  I could carry Sanji AND Luffy if I wanted to.  And then I wouldn't get tired."

"I don't believe that."

"Well I'll show you then." I said.  She thinks she's so smart.  I lift more weights than she could even DREAM of lifting on an OFF day!  It was no trouble to just carry the cook to the boat.  It's not like it was far away or anything.  And I carried him the whole way and I even held him with one hand as I climbed up the ladder and looked down to make sure that Nami was watching, and she was.  Boy I showed her.

I dropped him on the deck and waited for Nami to climb up.  "See?" I said as she climbed over the edge.  "I'm not tired."

"Oh yes, you're strong all right." Said Nami, rolling her eyes.

"I am." I said, since she was hinting to me that she didn't believe me.

"Well, I suppose you WOULD be, but you couldn't even carry him all the way to his room." She said with a sigh.  "That's all right!  I can take it from here!"

She bent over to grab Sanji, but I stopped her.  She thought I was tired and that I couldn't do it, when I could actually do it ten times.  "YOU don't have to do it." I said.

I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back to our little collaborative room area and dropped him in one of the hammocks, just in case Nami didn't think I was strong enough to finish the job all the way to completion.  Just when I was about to go back outside and do…I don't know, something…I figured that it was dark and it was late and though I wasn't tired because I swam, I was tired.  I didn't NEED to change into dry clothes so I yawned flamboyantly as to make sure that everyone knew that I was going to bed and not coming back out and then hopped into my own hammock and went to sleep.


	3. Nami's Day

Nami's Day

"LAND!!!"

Finally!  We were, at last, about to land after our week or so at sea.  I dressed myself and searched for my map of the area.  I looked the map up and down, trying to establish what island we were coming across to finally decide upon 'Silver River'.  I looked it up in one of my books and read about its history so I could tell the rest of the crew.

I opened the door, ready to explain everything to them. "Oh, we're at the island—" I began but was interrupted rudely by Sanji.

"GOOD MORNING NAMI-SAN!!!" yelled Sanji as he groveled at my feet and frolicked about happily.

I tried to be polite so I smiled but then returned to what I was saying.  "So anyway, we're approaching island Silver River." I explained as Sanji, Usopp and Luffy came over to look at my map.  I pointed to the island for them.  "It's a warring island."

"Warring?" Usopp asked.

"Yes." I said, glad that I had read up on the history of the island.  It certainly made me look like I obsessed about tiny insignificant islands like this one even though I don't in reality.  "There are two villages.  The Village of Men and the Village of Women.  The men are extremely conniving and intelligent whereas the women are amazingly strong.  The two villages can never really seem to get along."  I tried to remember more or elaborate…but I was really done at that point.  "And that's that."

"The explaining Nami-san is so CHARMING!!" Sanji exclaimed, though I doubt he listened to a word I said.

"I'm HUNGRY!!" Luffy yelled which told me that he was ALSO not listening to a word I said.  "Make me something!"

"Not right now." Sanji replied.

"Yes, Sanji, why don't you go and make breakfast?" I suggested, hoping to get a bit of quiet time as I studied the map, routing the best possible way for us to dock on the island for supplies.  We didn't have to stay for very long, just long enough to stock up on the things we were running low on.

"With love, Nami-san!!" Sanji cheered as he frolicked into the kitchen.  

"Are we going to dock there?" Usopp asked.  Maybe…just MAYBE Usopp had been listening to me.  But it wasn't likely.

"Not really," I answered.  "There's no reason to.  We can just pick up a few supplies and then head on our way."

"But I want to dock on the island." Whined Luffy probably wasn't even listening to me just then.  Then Usopp left, leaving me to deal with Luffy.

"Luffy, why don't you go and sit on our personal seat and be the lookout?" I suggested, knowing that that would hype him up.

"ALL RIGHT!!!" he yelled excitedly as he ran over to the ram's head at the front of our ship.

Now, I turned to find either Sanji or Zoro to command them to pull the sails in.  But, I remembered that I had already given Sanji an order and Zoro was probably out doing something already.  Maybe…steering?  But whatever he was doing, he was busy.

I wasn't about to pull the sails in by myself so I could go and get Luffy.  I didn't know if it would be a difficult thing to do to get him to get away from his personal seat.  Then…I looked up to see that the sails were already in and then I remembered that I had told the other four to pull them in last night.

So…maybe I would just go look for the map that was specifically about Silver River.  And if there wasn't one, I'd just make one.

But, much to my dismay, there was one.  It did take a while to find though, after searching through many piles and rolled up pieces of paper.  Luckily I was a slightly organized person so they were all properly labeled and mildly in alphabetical order but not exactly.  I studied the map and found that the two villages were practically on opposite sides of the island, separated by a small river that ran right down the middle of it.  I assumed that that's where it had gotten its name, 'Silver River'.  But…why 'Silver'?  Oh well, I couldn't let the name of the island plague me.

I took my map and walked back outside where I was immediately approached by Usopp.

"Nami, I can't find Zoro." He told me.

"Why are you looking for him?" I asked.

"Because he's supposed to put down the anchor." Usopp answered.  "Plus, he didn't help at all while we were docking."

He didn't help while we were docking?  What kind of crew member was he?  Here I was thinking he was off doing something important when it just occurred to me that he was probably sleeping the whole time.  I didn't have to assume he was sleeping, though, because he walked in yawning a very loud yawn that only angered me even more than I was before because it was like he was flaunting that he was sleeping the whole time while we were hard at work.

"Where were you?!" I asked.  "We've been doing all this work while you've just been sleeping!!"

He looked at me as if _I _was wrong for yelling at him.  But he didn't answer me.  He didn't even say anything.

"So what are you waiting for?!" I yelled, pointing at the anchor.  "Put the anchor down!!"  He has one job on this ship and he'd better do it right!

Then again, how could you not put an anchor down correctly?  I wanted him to do it wrong just so I could yell at him more.  But he did it just fine.  But anyone could have done that job so it only goes to show just how superfluous Zoro is.

Sanji emerged from the kitchen just then.  I was hoping that he would have breakfasts made but he actually just had a platter of drinks.  For crying out loud, HE has one job on this ship and he can't even do it right.

Something that irritated me just then was Sanji's pink apron.  Why would a man wear a pink apron?  He was either EXTREMELY confident with his sexuality or was questioning his sexuality.  Either one sounded like Sanji which confused and infuriated me.  

"I made some special drinks!" he announced, presenting the platter to me.

I couldn't let him get away with slacking off since it couldn't have taken him THAT long to make those drinks.  "Sanji!" I said.  "Where were YOU while we were landing and doing all that work?!"

"Nami-sa~~~n!" said Sanji as he continued to urge me to take a drink.  "I made you a drink!"  I didn't want to take one just because he should have been making breakfast.

"That doesn't answer my question!" I said.

"The angry Nami-san is so charming!!" Sanji yelled as he continued to dance so much that I thought he would drop all the drinks that had taken him all morning to make.  Supposedly.  Zoro seemed to be offended by the mere presences of Sanji's pink apron and the drinks…or maybe just Sanji all together because he left pretty much as soon as Sanji had burst through the door.  Usopp just stood there with a blank look on his face.  I wanted to twang his nose and see if it made a vibration noise.  It's one of my secret desires.

In fact, I have a secret desire with everyone on the ship.  Nothing sexual.  No, really.  Okay then.  I want to twang Usopp's nose, stretch Luffy all the way around the world and uncurl Sanji's eyebrow (or at least see the other one.)  As for Zoro… it's kind of stupid.  I want to steal that green thing he wears around his waist, wear it for a few minutes and then feed it to a third world country.  And then blame it on someone else.

"Sanji, why are you drinking all those?" Usopp's voice jerked me back into reality.  "I'll have one."

"Uh…sure." Said Sanji as he handed Usopp and I a drink.  

I decided that I was the only one losing by NOT drinking Sanji's special drink so I did.

"Where are Zoro and Luffy?" Sanji asked randomly.

"I'm sure they're around the boat somewhere." I replied as I drank the special drink.  No matter how much I try to hide it, I like the special drink.

"No, I saw them go over to the island." Said Usopp.

"WHAT?!" I yelled louder than I had originally intended.  I wanted to go in and go out and leave this island forever.  That was not going to happen now.  "We have to go to shore and get them."

"Why?" asked Usopp.  "I thought you said we were just going to pass by this island after getting supplies."

"That's why we have to go and pick them up!" Sanji said.  "Right, Nami-san?"

"What about the amazingly strong women and hideously conniving men?" Usopp asked.  Aha!  So he WAS listening to me!

"Whatever Nami-san says, goes!" Sanji declared.  Okay, I admit having a mindless servant like Sanji came in handy sometimes because Sanji could threaten Usopp into doing whatever he wanted.  And I could tell Sanji to do whatever I wanted.  Same with Usopp.  So I was seriously holding ALL the cards!

I guess I was thinking about this while we were getting off the ship because the next thing I knew, we were off the ship.  "Do you think Zoro and Luffy went to the Men's Village or the Women's Village?" I wondered out loud, not expecting anyone to really give me an intelligent answer.

"They have separate villages?" said Sanji.  See?  No intelligence whatsoever.  "Let's visit the Women's village!  I bet they're there!  That's where I would go!"

"Well, if we were looking for you then we'd definitely look there." I said.  The two idiots followed me around even though I had no intention of going to the Village of Women because I knew both of them wanted to go there.  Yes, I must admit that I did SORT OF want to go to the Village of Men but not in an obsessive kind of way like Sanji.

I wasn't sure if I was going the right way or not but thankfully, we passed by a sign that said 'Welcome to the Village of Men'.

"Nami-san!" complained Sanji as he fidgeted around unhappily.  "This is the Village of Men!"

"I know." I responded as I quickly came up with a BS reason why I would take them to the Village of Men as opposed to the Village of Women.  "If we were to run into hostile natives, would you rather attack a man or a woman?"

"A man of course." Sanji replied.  "Why?"

"Because, of the three of us, you're the only one who can attack and I don't need you melting over a woman instead of attacking her if she tries to kill us!" I said.  That actually made sense, considering I had just thought of it right then and there on the spot.

"I resent that!" said Usopp.  "I would attack any woman!"  I had forgotten that Usopp had this idea in his head that he was a good fighter or something.  So I figured that if I just ignored him…he'd shut up.

We entered this bizarrely small village just then.  It was tiny.  I could trip over the houses.  This definitely wasn't in what I read. "What's up with these tiny houses?" Usopp asked.

Just then, the doors to the tiny houses flung open a bunch of little teeny men with laser guns emerged.  These men were about three foot nothing and were dressed in futuristic type clothes.  I was disappointed that they weren't large Amazon men with rippling pectorals like melons and knees of fringe.  Usopp jumped behind me like the fearless leader he was.

"Don't move!" yelled one of the men.

"How dare you point that gun at Nami-san!" Sanji scolded them as he leapt in front of me and spread his arms out.  Yes, puppet, take the blow for me as I think up a clever scheme.

"We will shoot!" said another one.  Aha!  I have one.  That's a new record for me.

"You wouldn't shoot the representatives from the Women's Village!" I declared.

"Yes, we are GODS in the Women's Village!!" Usopp added.  Though that might have been pushing it, the men began to lower their guns and look interested.

Just then, another man who was just as small as the rest while also wearing a crown approached us.  "Yes…we can see that you are women." He said.  Obviously, my plan had worked perfectly.  "We know this because you all are very large."

"Nami-san is NOT fat!" said Sanji foolishly.  I was not worried about the men referring to me as fat, but I was glad to know that Sanji didn't think I was.  But he still was being annoying.

"Just ignore her." I said, elbowing him.

"Nami-san, I know they may be confused on our genders but you know very well that I am a man." Said Sanji.  "Now let's leave and go to the Village of Women."

"Have you come from the Village of Women to aid us in our search for the Prince and the Princess?" asked the Leader of the Men

"No." I replied, getting curious.  "What happened?"

"To end the warring of our two villages, we decided that we would just become one village." Explained the leader.  "We were going to marry my son to the other leader's daughter and become citizens of one village.  But, yesterday, both my son and her daughter disappeared.  This angered both villages and we have declared a fight to the death until the Prince and Princess are returned home and wed!"

"Could they have run away?" I suggested because I knew that I would have if my marriage had been arranged.  Especially if it was to a tiny little man half my size.  "What if they didn't want an arranged marriage?"

"It is impossible." Said the leader.  "You see, it was my son's idea in the first place."

"Maybe we could help you!" I declared, being the Good Samaritan I am.  

I was just about to mention a sort of…PAYMENT, when Sanji butt in with stupidity; "Hey Nami-san, Mr. Prince is back."

I may have overreacted, but I slapped him a few times to get him in order so he would know his place.

"We'll help you…but for a price!" I said when I confirmed to myself that Sanji was going to be quiet during my negotiations.

"Whatever you want, we'll give you." Said the Village Leader.  "Even though we have more intelligence and technology than the women, when it comes to brute strength, they vastly outweigh us.  Literally."

I was pleased to hear this.  So this meant that I could make the price as high as I wanted and they would pay me.  I tested how high he would go until he said they would be unable to pay but no matter how high I number I stated, he agreed and said that it was no problem for them.  I even made up a number and he said that it was reasonable.

So, when I was satisfied, I turned to Usopp and Sanji who had been very helpfully quiet this entire time.  "All right, we're going to go and find that Prince and Princess!" I told them.

"The determined Nami-san is so charming!!" yelled Sanji unexpectedly enough.

"Where do we start looking?" Usopp asked.

"At the Village of Women!" I said as I pulled out my map so I could route the shortest and most efficient path to the other Village.  "It's not too far.  We're just going to go there and talk to them."

As we journeyed, I tried to think of something other than the two warring villages.  Somehow, the thought of Zoro's green belt thing entered my head again.  What WAS it?  Why did he wear it?  All the time?  It didn't matter what else he was wearing, he always had that thing on.  I started to think that I would probably never get the opportunity to wear it or even touch it since he most likely showers with it on.  If he even showers.  I doubt any of the men on the ship shower.  Ew, that means that I'm on a ship with a bunch of stinky mean who wear green belts around their waists all the time.  Then again, only one of them wears a green belt.  One wears a pink apron.  Another wears a straw hat.  And as for Usopp… it doesn't matter WHAT he wears, his long nose is still ever so distracting and I just want to…twang…

"Nami-san, did you make that map?" asked Sanji suddenly.

I thought for a moment.  What was he talking about?  It had nothing to do with green belts or aprons or noses.  Then I remembered that that was all inner monologue and he was referring to the map I was following.  I looked at it and remembered that I had gotten this particular one from a book.  "No, not this one." I answered, hoping that my pause had not been TOO long but Sanji probably didn't care because he looked pleased.

"How much further until we get to that village?" Usopp asked.

"Oh!" I said as I just remembered that I should probably explain to them that the Village of Women were less civilized that the Village of Men.  And I did.

"Nami-san…they pulled guns on us and called you fat." Said Sanji, referring to the Village of Men.  "And you are not fat."

That was nice of him, but he was just being regular Sanji.  I waited to make sure he wasn't going to continue.  "Meaning…you two should probably hide while I speak with them."

Just then, we passed by a sign that said 'Welcome to Village of Woman' written sloppily while spelling a few words wrong.

"But Nami-san, I want to see these absurdly strong women." Sanji said.

"You'll have to see them from your hiding place then." I said, pointing to a bush they could hide in.

"YES OF COURSE NAMI-SA~~~N!!" cheered Sanji as he jumped behind the bush.  I hoped that the village women didn't hear that as I walked over to them.  A few of them approached me.

"You small woman." They said, standing at probably nine feet.

"Uh…yeah!" I said.  "I'm er…not full grown."

"Oh." They said, scratching their heads.

"So…" I said after a long pause.  "I'm looking for the Prince and Princess that have turned up missing.  Do you know anything about them?"

"Prince and Princess?" said one.  "We no know where are.  But village leaders go out to find them at Village of Men."

They pointed in a direction that was definitely not the way to the Village of Men.  In fact, it was pretty much the opposite direction.  "Okay…you sure they went that way?" I asked.  They all nodded and seemed pretty sure of themselves so I decided to take their word on it.

"Thank you!" I said as I went back over to Sanji and Usopp as the women continued to go about their day.

"They sent their leaders off to the Village of Men a little while ago," I explained quickly.  "Over in this direction."  If we hurried, we could catch up with the leaders and stop them before they did anything to the Village of Men.

"But that's not the direction we came from!" said Usopp.

"I know." I answered.  "But we have to catch up with them before they do anything hostile to the Village of Men!"

"The caring Nami-san is so CHARMING!!!" Sanji exclaimed as he frolicked happily with a big dopey grin on his face.

"Thank you, Sanji." I said, trying not to look TOO annoyed.  But it's not like it would have made a difference to him whether I looked annoyed or not.  In fact, he would probably go and say, 'The annoyed Nami-san is so charming!!'

We didn't search for very long but Usopp was seriously beginning to get on my nerves as his continuously whined about tromping through a forest area in search of some potentially hostile Village Leaders.  I knew where I was going and I knew what I wanted to do and if he didn't want to follow me then frankly, I didn't care if he stopped right then.  Sanji, of course, was skipping happily beside me and I'm not really sure if he was aware of the fact that he was just STARING at me with the creepiest grin on his face in the world.

Luckily, I looked forward again just in time to stop because three extremely pointy and sharp swords were being pointed at me.  The holder put them away, though, and I looked to see that it was Zoro who had threateningly almost severely injured me.

I realized that he was most likely trying to just protect himself since this island is definitely not the most friendly one we've ever been to, but he had to learn his lesson not to point his swords at me.  Zoro's like a dog, you see, you have to teach him his lesson the first time and punish him or else he'll never learn.  He'll just go about doing it over and over thinking it's right until he's finally told that it's wrong.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" I yelled at him.  As he started to say something, I had to stop him before he did or else he would think it was justified and then he would never learn.

"RIGHT, NAMI-SAN!!" Sanji's voice rang in the background.

"YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME!!!" I yelled at Zoro who was looking at me skeptically.  I wondered if he was learning.

"Not while I'm around, Nami-san!!" Sanji cheered.

"DON'T JUST POINT YOUR SWORD AT ANYTHING THAT MOVES!!" I yelled at him.  At that point, I think he understood because he had stopped looking as though he was going to retort.

"Don't you dare ever do that again or so help me!!" Sanji said as he threateningly began to wave his foot at Zoro's turned back.  I knew that, with a dog, if you go too far, it could end up just backfiring in your face and plus, Sanji was just annoying me, as usual.

"Sanji, be quiet." I instructed him.  

"Yes, SIR, Nami-san!!" Sanji said.

"I don't need you doing that though." I continued since he had clearly not listened to me and I had to reiterate myself.  "I can take care of myself just fine."  Now that I think about it, I feel as though I am truly on a ship with a bunch of dogs that desperately need to be trained.  

"The independent Nami-san is so charming!!" Sanji exclaimed.

I knew that teaching Sanji would require a DIFFERENT level of help.  Maybe the age old 'Rolled Up Newspaper' technique would be best.

I turned away from him and attempted to engage myself in intelligent conversation with Luffy and Usopp but… what was I expecting?  Luffy and Usopp?  Intelligent conversation?  No…

"What are you all doing out here anyway?" Usopp said to Luffy.

"I'm the captain so I should be the one asking you all that question!" Luffy answered with a scruff.

"We're looking for the Village Leaders of the Village of Women." Usopp replied since I hadn't decided to interject just yet.

"Oh!" Luffy said as he proudly pointed to himself and Zoro.  "That's us."

Zoro and Luffy could hardly handle themselves let alone lead an entire village.  I mean, they had gotten themselves lost on an island before we had even docked on it so HOW could they possibly have won the Village of Women over to make the women decide to make Zoro and Luffy their leaders?

"YOU TWO are the village leaders?" I asked, figuring that the best way to get information was to ask.  "How?  WHY?"

"Uh, no, just Luffy, not me." Zoro said.

"No, we both worked TOGETHER to beat the large women!" Luffy said.

"So you beat up the women and they made you their leaders?" I said more specifically since they were having trouble answering my previous question that required something other than a 'Yes' or a 'No'.

"Well, I guess that settles it then." Said Sanji, though I couldn't imagine what 'that' had settled considering we hadn't come to any sort of conclusion at all. "You two can just tell them not to rage war against the Village of Men." Even though I failed at figuring out Sanji's trail of thought just then, I wasn't about to shoot down a good idea.

"But the Village of Men is the one that's raging war against US!" Luffy said. 

"Don't say US!" Zoro said as they once again brought up the fact that he did not enjoy being a Village Leader, not that I could blame him.  "You're not REALLY part of their village!"

"I'm their leader!" Luffy said.

It was time to get off this topic and go back to more important issues!  "Whatever it is, just tell them not to go to war." I said.  "And that's another conflict solved."

"What about the prince and princess?" Usopp said suddenly.  Then I remembered my negotiations with the Village Leader of the Village of Men and knew that I was obligated to carry out my deal if I wanted to be paid, which I did very much so.

"We were just going to the Village of Men and DEMAND that they return the princess back home!" Luffy declared.

Apparently, the whole conflict was not getting through to Luffy.  "But we just came from the Village of Men and they have the same problem." I said.

"What problem?" Luffy asked.

"THEY don't know where the Prince and Princess are either." I explained, trying to sound as nice as possible.

We all pondered about our next plan of action.  Actually, I was probably the only one pondering about our next plan of action and everyone else was most likely thinking of something else that only concerned THEIR needs and wants.  Zoro was probably thinking about becoming the best swordsman in the world, all that was EVER in Sanji's head was girls, Luffy was probably thinking of absolutely nothing whatsoever and Usopp… well, he was probably conjuring up another lie.

"With our luck, they'll probably be at the top of that mountain." Usopp said suddenly.

It seemed to make sense.  I looked at the mountain curiously, wondering who wanted something with the Prince and Princess.  My peaceful wondering was short lived because I felt myself being latched onto and then jerked forward, sent hurtling in the air.  After a moment of shock and confusion, I realized that Luffy had decided that he wanted to go to the top of the mountain, most likely in search of the Prince and Princess and he had ALSO decided that he wanted to bring me along!  The nerve!!

This had never happened to me before, but the landing was terribly hard and unpleasant.  When the dust cleared and I finished hacking and coughing I saw that Luffy had gotten up and was now parading around the peak of the mountain, way too happy with himself that he had completed such a feat.

"What did you do that for?!" I yelled.

"WOW!" he cheered, looking over the edge.  "We're so high up!!"

"I ask you again, WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!" I demanded, louder this time.

He turned around and looked at me.  "Huh?" he said, repeating it over and over as he looked back and forth.  "Where is everyone else?  How come it's only you, Nami?"

He was implying that he didn't want my company, even after he had grabbed me so violently and carried me to this desolate mountain peak.  "Luffy, if you remember correctly, you were the one who grabbed ME." I said patiently.

"But I grabbed everyone else too." Said Luffy.

"OBVIOUSLY you didn't!" I yelled, not so patient anymore.

"But I DID." Said Luffy as if I was the one who was way off here and if I simply turned around I would see everyone else standing there giggling at me for not realizing they were there the whole time.

A quick look behind me was in order, but they weren't there.

Even though everyone was clearly not there, Luffy took it upon himself to search for them all.  He looked under rocks, over the edge of the cliff and actually began to dig a hole until I ran over and hit him on the head so he stopped.  "Hey, Nami, what did you do that for?" he complained.

"They're not going to be in a hole!" I told him.  "You just didn't grab them on the way up!"

"But I thought I did." Said Luffy, scratching his head.  "I thought I grabbed everyone."

I was never going to get through to him, so a sly trick was in order.  "Oh that's right!" I said.  "I just saw them start running down the mountain.  If we hurry, maybe we can catch up with them.  But we need to go now because they're pretty fast."

"Not as fast as me!!" Luffy declared as he jumped out of his hole and started running at top speed down the path.

"Wait up!!" I yelled at him as I only started running as fast as a regular HUMAN could run.

I was glad that the path didn't have hundreds of branch offs and random turns.  In fact, I was glad that there was a path in the first place because now I couldn't lose Luffy unless he did something stupid like jump off the cliff.  But not even Luffy would do something that stupid.  I finally caught up with him because he had stopped dead in front of a large gorge that had a rickety old rope bridge stretching across from one end to the other.

"Let's go!" he said, sounding excited as he stepped on the bridge.

"Luffy, is this bridge really all that safe?" I asked hesitantly as I stepped on it, hearing it creek.

"It's PLENTY safe!" Luffy declared but pretty much as he said that, he might not have even been finished saying it, the ropes snapped and we both tumbled off the bridge and plummeted to the ground.  I screamed myself hoarse and the only thing that finally silenced me is when we landed in a river that, thankfully, was pretty deep.

I could have saved myself just then and swam to shore when I remembered that Luffy couldn't swim.  So I swam down the river until I came across his unconscious body sinking under the water.  However, by that time, the current had picked up a little and now I couldn't swim to shore even if I _wasn't_ carrying Luffy's weight.  So I found myself screaming my head off again as the two of us tumbled down the raging river until we crashed into something hard.

I felt a hand on my arm and then I was pulled up into a small, primitive boat.

"What this?" came a voice.  I looked up to see one of the enormous women from the Village of Women.  Apparently, she was out fishing for her tribe and just so happened to stumble across Luffy and I.

"Oh thank GOD you're here!!" I said, expressing my thanks to her in any way I could think of.

At that point, Luffy woke up.  "That was fun," he said groggily.

I could have killed him right then and there, but then I remembered that we were supposed to be on a mission to find the Prince and Princess.  "Uh… we think we know where your Prince and Princess are." I tried.

"We go back to village now." Said the woman.  "We get prepared for war."

"War?!" I demanded.  "No!  We're going to find the Prince and Princess!  Right, Luffy?  Tell them!  YOU'RE the Village Leader!"

"Yeah!" said Luffy but then he didn't really follow up with anything.

"WELL?!" I said, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them.

"Let's get those men for capturing the princess!!" Luffy yelled at the top of his lungs.

"NO!!!" I screamed at him.

"Time go to war!" said the woman as she docked her boat.

"No, you can't!" I said, grabbing the woman and attempting to stop her but only ended up getting a foot ride all the way back to the village.  Of course, Luffy felt he NEEDED to have a ride too and grabbed onto her other leg.  If I didn't stop this war, then I wouldn't get paid and if I didn't get paid, then I'd be very very angry and take it out on someone else.

"I HAVE FOUND THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS!!!" I heard a familiar voice scream.  I got up from my position on the ground and try to see over the mob of large women all looking at _something_ but I couldn't see anything until suddenly, they all got down to the ground and started bowing.

Then I could clearly see Usopp standing out in front, being bowed to.  As I made my way through the bowing women, I tried to step on as few as possible but I think I must have stepped on one or two but I wasn't about to lose any sleep over it.  Usopp was looking smug with himself as I looked at the two people behind him, one really large woman and one really small man, each wearing a crown.

"How did you find them?!" I demanded because this seemed way too far-fetched that Usopp actually did anything right.

"Easy!" Usopp answered as he rambled off a bunch of absurd lies about the toils he went through to find the Prince and Princess.  If he was BS-ing this, I was seriously going to kill him. 

"WOW!!" yelled the typical Luffy.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!  WOW!!  WOW!!"

It wasn't right.  It couldn't possibly have worked out.  How could Usopp have found the Prince and Princess while no one else could?  "What, I FOUND them didn't I?" Usopp said, sounding defensive.  "They're here aren't they?  I don't see what the problem is!"

"There's no problem." I said, figuring that it wasn't my problem if it turned out that he made all this stuff up.

"This call for big feast!!" declared one of the women as they all stood up.  She then turned to Luffy.  "It okay, Village Leader?"

"Fine with me!" Luffy agreed.

"It okay, God Usopp?" the woman asked, looking at Usopp.  "Grand feast in your honor!!"

"Of COURSE it's all right!" Usopp said happily.

"YOU'RE A GOD?!" screamed Luffy.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!"  I swear, if I told him that 'gullible' wasn't in the dictionary, instead of looking it up to make sure, he would cry for hours.

The women then broke out their instruments and had a mass dinner that everyone was invited to.  We were all made the guests of honor as the women danced around happily and cried out with joy that their saviors had arrived.  They're saviors, I figured, must have been us.

All of this seemed so wrong to me, sitting here partying.  I felt as though we had something important to do.  And where were Zoro and Sanji?  Weren't they supposed to be doing something?  Even if they weren't, they should have been here right now so we could leave this place now that the Prince and Princess were found.  And I wanted to be paid.  A lot.

Suddenly, all the village went completely silent.  I turned around to see that Usopp had quieted them down and since they all thought he was a god, they were all waiting for him to say something.  I couldn't help by roll my eyes but what was I supposed to do?

"I think Prince Cornelius has something to say!" he announced.

Prince Cornelius?  I turned and looked at the tiny man who as sitting across the table.  He straightened his collar and took a deep breath.

"Thank you, Great God and Captain Usopp." He said.  "Listen, everyone!  It seems to have slipped all of our minds that we must also travel to my village to inform them that I am all right and there is no reason to go to war!"

Oh dear, THAT'S what we were supposed to be doing!

"That's right!" I said frantically.  "The Village of Men is probably on their way over here right now!"

I was about the continue, though, but all the women started screaming and crying out in fear so I could hardly get a word in no matter how loud I yelled.  "But it's okay!!" I tried, but my attempts were in vain.  "Because once they come here and see the prince and princess all right, the war will end before it even starts!"

It was no use trying to get them to calm down.  They were already in too much of a panic.  Then, all of a sudden, everything stopped and they all turned around.  I stood up on a table to see that there was a mob of little men standing at the entrance to the village.

"We have come to sacrifice your Beautiful and Fair Village Leader and Village Representative!" announced one of them.

"No need!" I said, jumping off the table and trying to make my way to where the men were.  Everything stopped momentarily until I finally arrived at my destination.  "We found the Prince!  You don't have to go to war!"

"I'm right here!" Prince Cornelius said, following right up behind me.

"Well good!" exclaimed the mob of tiny men.

"NAMI-SAN!!!" I heard the familiar voice of Sanji.  I turned around to see that Sanji was running around in a strange manner punting all of the little men up into the air.  Might I also add that he was tied to Zoro who was doing absolutely nothing to stop him.  "I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THESE HORRIBLE TINY MEN!!!"

They were just making matters WORSE!!  They had to be thusly smote so I stomped right up to them and, while I didn't SMITE them, I did hit them on the head to they were knocked to the ground.

"WHAT are you doing?!" I demanded.

"What am _I _doing?!" said Zoro as if he were mortally offended.  "I TRIED to get him to stop!"

I didn't believe him.  He was just trying to get out of the fact that he was far too lazy to stop Sanji from going crazy.  EVERYONE knows that Sanji is mentally unstable and you can't just go and let him do crazy things like that.  Cornelius came up to Zoro just then and whispered to him, "Although my heart belongs to Ung, I must say that you are much more beautiful." 

I didn't want to know.  I didn't want to know.  I just wouldn't ask.  I just didn't want to know.

And as if the situation couldn't get anymore mentally retarded, Luffy came out of nowhere.  I had to leave.  I walked off to have some quiet time and exhale some of the stress I had taken on ever since I had become apart of this crew.  Why didn't I see it in the first place?  No good could come from this little pirate excursion I was on.  All I got from it was humiliation.

Those three were probably making a mess of things over there.  And WHERE was Usopp?!  I swear, I do not belong here.  I figured that they were probably starting the war all over again so I decided to go back to the ship and wait for them all to return to me there.

However, to my dismay, upon returning to the boat, I found that it was not there.  Hm…our boat.  Was not there.  No boat.

So, before I could let myself panic, I went on a little hunt for the boat.  After a minute, I saw that it had merely drifted out to sea because SOMEBODY hadn't done a good job putting the anchor down.  Geez, Zoro has ONE job on the boat… ONE JOB!!  And he can't even do that right.

It wasn't very hard to find a boat.  Many of the men had come to the Village of Women by sea so I was able to just snatch one and transport it to a secluded location so they would be none the wiser.  I sat there basking in my superiority and intelligence for a little while until I remembered that I had to go and find the rest of the crew and bail THEM out, as usual.

So I returned to the Village of Women to find a party!  There was a party happening!  What was going on?  Why was there a party?

"NAMI-SAN!!!" yelled Sanji as he frolicked over to me.  I tried to pretend as though I didn't notice him, but he caught up to me rather quickly.  "NAMI-SAN!!  DANCE WITH ME, NAMI-SAN!!"

"Uh…no thank you, Sanji." I said, trying not to hurt his feelings.  I inched away from him and went to a drink table where I retrieved a beverage for myself.  No sooner had a done so, but Sanji had returned!

"NAMI-SAN!!" he cheered.  "DANCE WITH ME NOW!!"

"NO!!" I said more forcefully.  He was OBVIOUSLY extremely drunk so I avoided him the best I could and I found it easier than before because he just continued and continued to drink until he was just a mess over in the corner.  I poked him a few times but he was out cold.

I looked around for anyone else to find Usopp just standing there PRETENDING to be doing something.

"We're going to leave soon." I told him.  "Let's get out of here during the party so we don't make a big deal about it.  There's a little boat over at the river down that path, so take Sanji there and I'll get the other two."

"Why do _I _have to take Sanji over there?!" whined Usopp obnoxiously.

Since he had whined so obnoxiously, I wasn't going to dignify that question with a REAL answer.  "Because I said so." I replied.  He groaned and moaned a little bit until he eventually walked off to complete my task.

Then I continued my search for Zoro.  Though, he seemed to find me.  But as I waited for him to say something, he didn't.  So, I took the initiative.

"We're going to be leaving soon." I told him  "We're going to try and slip away unnoticed as to not make a big deal about it all."

"I'll meet you at the ship." He said rudely as he pushed by me in a just as rude fashion.  I stood there being offended for a minute or two, but then realized that he didn't really care and I was getting nothing out of being offended.

Getting something?  Oh that reminds me!  I'm still due for my payment for saving the villages!  First, I'd talk to Luffy since he was sitting down only about fifty feet away and THEN I would go and get paid!

"Luffy!" I called to him.

"Oh, hi Nami!" said Luffy, waving his arms.  "Do you want some meat?  I filled Zoro's drum up with meat."

Did I even want to know?  I raised an eyebrow at his skeptically, but he took full confidence in what he had just said despite the fact that it didn't particularly make sense.  I mean…Zoro has a drum?  And it was filled up with meat?

"Uh…right." I said.  "We're heading out now.  If you just walk down that path, you'll come across a small boat that will take us out to the ship."

"But I'm eating my meat!" he complained.

"Take it with you!" I said, just wanting to get out of there.

"Right!" said Luffy happily.  I decided to leave it at that and then search for the Leader of the Men when he called after me, "Aren't you coming, Nami?"

"I have something to take care of first." I answered even though he had no right to ask the question in the first place, but I felt as though he deserved a response for being strangely cooperative.  "I'll see you all there in a few minutes!"

I didn't wait for a response and quickly ran off to find the Leader of the Men.  He wasn't hard to find because he was dancing with the Leader of the Women…well, I guess it was the FORMER Leader of the Women he was dancing with considering he was NOT dancing with Luffy or Zoro.

At first, I felt rude that I was interrupting their dance but I didn't feel like waiting any longer.  "Err…" I began.  "I believe… I believe we discussed a payment for saving the village…"

"OF COURSE!!" said the Leader with a chuckle as he beckoned for two men to come with a huge bag over their heads that was surely bigger than the both of them.  They dropped it down at my feet and then hurried off to continue with their partying.  "I hope this is enough to please you." Said the Village Leader.

"Oh yes, it's FINE!" I said, happily taking the treasure and running off before he could say anything else… like ask me for a dance or something.  Now that would just be creepy.

As I rounded the corner, I got many comments on my large bag, but no one offered to jump out and help me carry it.

"What's that?" Usopp asked.

"Just my payment for finding the Prince and Princess and ending the war." I answered, ignoring Luffy who was being annoying as usual.

"Hey, _I _was the one who found the Prince and Princess and ended the war!" said Usopp angrily.

"We're ALL going to be sharing it!" I assured him even though it was SO untrue.  This treasure was all mine.  And I knew that he would forget about it soon and he probably knew that too.  Zoro started rowing us along and I started to notice that the rims of our boat were pretty low into the water.  Bits of water splashed into the boat but I didn't really take head of it and just looked around, waiting for us to reach the ship.

After a minute, I looked down to see that we had taken in a lot more water than I had originally thought and we were only sinking LOWER.

"There's water in the boat!!" I yelled since no one else seemed to notice or care.

"We're too heavy!" said Usopp.  "Get rid of the treasure!"

"NEVER!!" I yelled, offended that he had even said something like that.

"All right…get rid of the meat!" Usopp corrected himself.

"NEVER!!!" yelled Luffy in almost a mocking fashion.

"We're SINKING!!" Usopp said even though I had stated it earlier.  "Do we have any other deadweight that we can throw overboard?!"

It was silent.

"How about the cook?" Zoro asked.

"YEAH!!" I said without thinking.  I was just too wrapped up in keeping us from sinking but also keeping the treasure from being thrown overboard.  Part of me knew that Zoro would never throw Sanji into the water, but when I heard a splash, I learned the hard way that he actually had.

"Wait a second!" said Luffy dramatically.  "THAT'S MY COOK!!"  Being the dumb ass he is, he leapt into the water and didn't resurface.  I wasn't about to just dive in, so I looked at Zoro to see that he had already taken it upon himself to do so.

"It was a stupid idea to throw Sanji overboard." I told Usopp.

"It wasn't MY idea!" Usopp said immediately even though I had never even SAID that it was his fault.  "YOU'RE the one who agreed to it!"

"I had to protect my treasure!" I said, knowing perfectly well that I had but now irritated that he was making me look bad.  "Besides, I didn't see you doing anything to stop it!"

Then, strangely enough, conversation sort of just ended at that point.  Usopp began to whistle and I gave him a few glares that told him to stop but he only looked at me, acknowledged my glares and then just continued to whistle as if I had told him that I enjoyed his whistling.  Thankfully, Zoro came back to the surface at around that time with Sanji over one arm and Luffy over the other.

"Ah, a beautiful green haired mermaid has saved me!" exclaimed Sanji who was still incredibly drunken but probably was just awakened by the water.  Zoro did us ALL a favor and knocked him out again.

Usopp and I hauled Luffy back onto the boat but then I motioned for Usopp to stop as Zoro waited for us to take Sanji.  I was noting the rims of the boat and saw that we had stopped taking in water now that Zoro and Sanji's weight were overboard.

"Actually, Zoro, we can't take anymore weight." I told him as he continued to wait for us to pull Sanji up.  "This is perfect.  If you and Sanji just swim then we won't sink!"

"But he can't swim!" Zoro said.  "He's unconscious!"

"Well whose fault is THAT Mr. Mermaid?!" I asked him, putting my hands on my hips.

He knew I was right, so he tried to come up with a different excuse.  "How about one of you switch places with him?"

"I have to row!" Usopp declared, grabbing the oars.

"And I'm a lady." I said even though I THOUGHT that Zoro was at least smart enough to know that I'm not supposed to do any manual labor.  "And I'm wearing a white shirt!"

Then he responded with the stupidest thing I had ever heard;  "So am I."

"You know, Zoro, when a guy wears a tight, wet, white shirt, it's okay!  As a matter of fact, it's great!"—I later regretted saying that—"But when a girl wears a tight, wet, white shirt…"

"I get it!!" Zoro said, getting uncomfortable which was exactly my goal so he would stop trying to make me jump out.  "But I'm sure you can take Sanji onboard, he doesn't weigh very much!"

It was now time for me to take advantage of my intelligence and Zoro's stupidity.  "Are you not tough enough to carry him?" I said.

"What?" he said, looking truly shocked.

I was going to go all out.  "Well, here I was THINKING you were a tough guy and I WAS admiring how strong you were to row all by yourself without being fatigued AT ALL, and then go and save Luffy and Sanji but…" I let out a loud, obvious sigh.  "I guess it was all an act."

"I don't act."

"Fine, just hand us Sanji, you don't need to carry him if you're tired."

"No.  I'm not tired at all.  I could carry Sanji AND Luffy if I wanted to.  And then I wouldn't get tired."  It was working!  I'm so smart!   I just had to finish it off!

"I don't believe that."

"Well I'll show you then." 

And that was that.  I told Usopp to start rowing, and he did.  Zoro seemed like he was trying to prove himself and actually beat us back to the ship but I wasn't about to argue with him.  Though, when I climbed up the ladder, I was a little freaked out that he was standing there waiting for me to come up.

"See?" he said, looking as though he believed he had triumphed.  "I'm not tired."

I looked down at Sanji who was lying down on the deck, still unconscious.  I couldn't just have him lying there on the deck like that.  What if we took a sharp turn or something?  What if there was a big wave?  He'd be gone…and I didn't very well want to take him back to the room!  I just had to utilize Zoro a _teeny _bit more and then I'll leave him alone.  "Oh yes, you're strong all right." I said, doing an obvious eye roll.

"I am." Said Zoro defiantly.

"Well, I suppose you WOULD be, but you couldn't even carry him all the way to his room.  That's all right!  I can take it from here!"

I knew he would stop me, so I bent over slowly to grab Sanji but, just as I predicted, he grabbed my arm.  "YOU don't have to do it." He said, sounding like I couldn't have said anything else to offend him more.  He took Sanji's collar and dragged him off to their quarters.  Well, I think it was pretty much a job well done as I went back to my room to clean up my maps and change into my pajamas.

I was about to hop in bed and go to sleep when something suddenly occurred to me.  My crewmembers had probably all consumed a lot of alcohol, which meant they would all be sleeping VERY deeply tonight.  _This_ meant that this was probably the most perfect night to do all of my non-sexual desires on them.

When I was sure everyone was fast asleep, I crept into their sleeping area to find that they were.  I sneaked over to Usopp first because I wanted to twang his nose the most out of everyone.  I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, counted to three in my head and then flicked his nose.  It didn't make even close to the humorous TWANG nose I had been picturing and SO desired but I did feel a certain satisfaction after finally doing so.

And the best part was, he didn't wake up!

Then I went to Sanji.  I didn't know how I would possibly go about uncurling his eyebrow.  I mean, the only way to do something like that would be to wax it or shave it off completely and I wasn't about to do THAT because that would just be plain mean.  So I fiddled with it for a minute or two but nothing really happened and he began to murmur things under his breath and I was afraid that he would be waking up and the last thing I needed was Sanji to wake up while I was fondling his face.

Zoro was next on the list!  I didn't know how I would get the green thing off from around his waist, especially without waking him.  I stared at it for a minute but when nothing happened, I decided to do something else instead.  So I went back to my room and found a green piece of map making paper and cut it up so I could wrap it around my waist.  Then I pinned it to my pajamas and walked around with it on for a little while, pretending it was the actual thing.

When I was done, instead of feeding it to a third world country, (since there was none of those in sight) I tossed it off the ship and into the water where it would hopefully wash up on shore of a third world country.

I looked at Luffy who was sleeping soundly on his little seat.  I knew I couldn't stretch him around the world while we were on a ship.  I would have to do him at some other point in time, and maybe if I asked permission, he would even help me do it.  But, at the moment, I was feeling tired after all that excitement so I retired back to my room.

After kissing all my maps goodnight, I got into bed, glad that the day was finally over.


	4. Usopp's Day

Usopp's Day

I knew I should have gone up to take Zoro's place in the crow's nest but from way up there, there was absolutely no way he knew that his shift had been over for almost an hour.  I intended to prolong it for as long as possible as I walked around, working on small tasks that I should have finished the day before.  But when it got to the point in which I thought he saw me, I decided not to push it anymore than I already was because it was better to just take my watch as opposed to facing the wrath of Zoro.

We didn't exchange any words as I took his place but he looked agitated so I wasn't going to press conversation.  After I got myself comfortable, I saw off in the distance a small bit of land that I wondered how Zoro had possibly missed but I knew it was my duty to inform the crew that there was land.

"LAND!!!" I yelled as loudly as I could as I shimmied down the mast and ran over to the front of the boat.  I'm real good at shimmying.  I rival God at shimmying.  I rival God at just about everything.

Luffy was the first to arrive.  "YAAAAAAY!!!" he cheered as he jumped high in the air and then continued to cheer and jump around.

Then Sanji entered and said something mildly strange; "It DOES exist, I knew it!" he yelled.

Well, of course land existed.  I've been on it.  He's been on it.  I thought Sanji was smarter than that.  "Was there any doubt that it didn't exist?" said Usopp.

"Of course there's been doubt." Said Sanji as if I had accused him of something.  I decided to just ignore that since it was early so he was probably just still half asleep.

Nami then emerged from her room with a map in hand.  "Oh, we're at the island—"

"GOOD MORNING NAMI-SAN!!!" yelled Sanji as he jumped around almost as happily as Luffy.

She rolled her eyes and smiled politely.  "So anyway, we're approaching island Silver River." She explained as she pointed things out on the map.  "It's a warring island."

"Warring?" I asked.

"Yes." Said Nami.  "There are two villages.  The Village of Men and the Village of Women.  The men are extremely conniving and intelligent whereas the women are amazingly strong.  The two villages can never really seem to get along."  She shrugged.  "And that's that."

"The explaining Nami-san is so CHARMING!!" Sanji exclaimed.

Nami sighed heavily.  I was going to tell Sanji to go and make himself useful but Luffy did instead even though I was going to because I really was going to cause it's not like I'm afraid of Sanji or his kicking or anything.  "I'm HUNGRY!!" Luffy yelled.  "Make me something!"

"Not right now." Sanji replied.

"Yes, Sanji, why don't you go and make breakfast?" Nami said.

"With love, Nami-san!!" Sanji cheered as he frolicked into the kitchen.  Nami gave a sigh of relief and I knew she had just done that to get rid of him, which I couldn't blame her.

I wondered what I could do to fill my time until we docked.  "Are we going to dock there?" I asked Nami.

"Not really," Nami answered.  "There's no reason to.  We can just pick up a few supplies and then head on our way."

"But I want to dock on the island." Whined Luffy who was, contrary to popular belief, still there.  So I went off to go and steer the boat in the island since steering is fun and I'm definitely the best at it out of everyone else.  Even God.  So, with my superior steering skills, we easily maneuvered into a good place to dock our boat.  However, the anchor still needed to be put down and, even though I could have done it myself, I knew that Zoro had to feel as though he contributed to the crew so I went off to find him.

For some strange reason, the first place I looked was the kitchen.  Maybe Zoro was hungry.  I don't know.  But that's the first place I looked.

"Zoro…?" I began as I poked my head in only to see Sanji beginning to spaz out over something.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!" he yelled, practically pulling his hair out.  "Nami-san's special drink!!  It's ruined!!  I'll have to start all over!!  I can't believe this has happened to Nami-san's special drink!  How could I have possibly been so very careless?!"

I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could so I scouted the area, didn't spot Zoro, and left before Sanji took his anger out on me.  Even though I could have fended him off.  I didn't want to harm him.

"Nami, I can't find Zoro." I said even though I had only really looked in one place.  But how was she supposed to know that?  As far as she knew, I searched the whole ship.  And I did, actually.  Twice.

"Why are you looking for him?" asked Nami.

"Because he's supposed to put down the anchor." I answered.  "Plus, he didn't help at all while we were docking."

Just then, Zoro came around the corner yelling out an extremely fake and really loud yawn.  That yawn obviously annoyed Nami because before _I _could yell at him, she did.

"Where were you?!" she demanded.  "We've been doing all this work while you've just been sleeping!!"

We stood there in silence.  Zoro didn't really say anything.  Or move for that matter.  He only…stood there.

"So what are you waiting for?!" she yelled.  "Put the anchor down!!"

He went over and performed that task as if it was nothing.  But it probably wasn't.  I could lift that anchor easily.  Two of them.  If we needed two.

"I made some special drinks!" I heard Sanji announce.  I turned around to see Sanji holding a platter of drinks since he had clearly just made them.  I hope he threw away the 'ruined' one.

"Sanji!" said Nami.  "Where were YOU while we were landing and doing all that work?!"

"Nami-sa~~~n!" said Sanji as his eyes turned into big pulsing hearts and his cigarette puffed out little heart shaped puffs of smoke.  "I made you a drink!"

"That doesn't answer my question!" Nami pointed out.

"The angry Nami-san is so charming!!" Sanji yelled.  I wondered how a man could possibly be so shameless.

It was then that I noticed Luffy's arm stretch by.  Then, Luffy and Zoro were launched toward the island.  I watched them soar through the air for a moment and then decided to disregard it all together because as long as I didn't have to go, I didn't care.  Besides, Sanji and Nami probably knew where they were going so I didn't want to look stupid.

I turned back to accept my special drink from Sanji but then noticed that he began to chug one of them.  Then another.  And when he went to the third one, I knew he wasn't going to stop unless I stopped him.

"Sanji, why are you drinking all those?" I asked, hoping to stop him.  "I'll have one."

"Uh…sure." Said Sanji as he handed me one of the drinks.  I got the impression that he had made all of them for himself so I wondered if I had any place to take one, but I tried not to let it bother me as I drank it.

"Where are Zoro and Luffy?" Sanji asked randomly, entirely changing the subject.

"I'm sure they're around the boat somewhere." Nami replied.

"No, I saw them go over to the island." I said.

"WHAT?!" screamed Nami.  This clued me in that perhaps she DIDN'T notice that Zoro and Luffy and flew to the island a few minutes ago.  "We have to go to shore and get them."

"Why?" I asked but I wasn't scared or anything.  "I thought you said we were just going to pass by this island after getting supplies."

"That's why we have to go and pick them up!" Sanji said.  "Right, Nami-san?"

"What about the amazingly strong women and hideously conniving men?" I reminded her.  As NOT afraid as I was, I still didn't want to have to go to shore with a bunch of…amazingly strong women and hideously conniving men.

"Whatever Nami-san says, goes!" Sanji declared, getting way too close for comfort that I could actually feel his cigarette burning my handsome nose.

We ended up disembarking even though I really didn't want to.  But, I had to set a good example for my crew since I was the captain and all.

"Do you think Zoro and Luffy went to the Men's Village or the Women's Village?" said Nami as she opened her map.

"They have separate villages?" said Sanji, getting his stupid heart eyes again.  He's such a womanizer.  "Let's visit the Women's village!  I bet they're there!  That's where I would go!"

"Well, if we were looking for you then we'd definitely look there." Nami said, rolling her eyes.  Even though I was the captain, I let Nami lead the way so that she could feel important.  After all, I'm a kind person like that and can't always take all the glory.  Otherwise, I would always be glorified.

Even though I had originally assumed that we were going to the Village of Women, we passed a sign that said 'Welcome to the Village of Men'.

"Nami-san!" complained Sanji as he fidgeted around unhappily.  "This is the Village of Men!"

"I know." Nami responded.  "If we were to run into hostile natives, would you rather attack a man or a woman?"

"A man of course." Sanji replied.  "Why?"  He would probably NEVER attack a woman, especially a beautiful one.  Or an amazingly strong one.  Even though I could easily take one on.

"Because, of the three of us, you're the only one who can attack and I don't need you melting over a woman instead of attacking her if she tries to kill us!" Nami said.

But that was entirely untrue!!  I could attack just fine and I had all my bombs and my slingshot since I always come prepared!  "I resent that!" I said.  "I would attack any woman!"  From Nami's lack of reply, I assumed that she thought of me as the trump card who would sweep in and save everyone when Sanji failed.  'When'.  Not 'If'.

The village was…small.  It was a village for Smurfs or something.  "What's up with these tiny houses?" I asked.

Just then, the doors to the tiny houses flung open a bunch of little teeny men with laser guns emerged.  These men were about three foot nothing and were dressed in futuristic type clothes.  I jumped behind Nami so I could… er… cover her back just in case any of them were behind her.

"Don't move!" yelled one of the men.

"How dare you point that gun at Nami-san!" Sanji scolded them, shaking his finger at one of them.

"We will shoot!" said another one.

"You wouldn't shoot the representatives from the Women's Village!" said Nami.  She was obviously trying to think of a way to keep them from shooting.

Representatives?  Ha!  I could think of MUCH better!  "Yes, we are GODS in the Women's Village!!" I said as I jumped out from behind Nami and struck a pose.

Just then, another man who was just as small as the rest while also wearing a crown approached us.  "Yes…we can see that you are women." He said.  Obviously, my plan had worked perfectly.  "We know this because you all are very large."

"Nami-san is NOT fat!" said Sanji foolishly.  He was really only making the situation worse.

"Just ignore her." Said Nami as she elbowed him before I could clobber him.  I would have.  And he wouldn't have gotten up for a week.

"Nami-san, I know they may be confused on our genders but you know very well that I am a man." Said Sanji as he CONTINUED to blow our cover.  "Now let's leave and go to the Village of Women."

"Have you come from the Village of Women to aid us in our search for the Prince and the Princess?" asked the Leader of the Men, obviously not hearing or just plain ignoring Sanji.

"No." said Nami.  "What happened?"

"To end the warring of our two villages, we decided that we would just become one village." Explained the leader.  "We were going to marry my son to the other leader's daughter and become citizens of one village.  But, yesterday, both my son and her daughter disappeared.  This angered both villages and we have declared a fight to the death until the Prince and Princess are returned home and wed!"

"Could they have run away?" asked Nami.  "What if they didn't want an arranged marriage?"

"It is impossible." Said the leader.  "You see, it was my son's idea in the first place."

"Maybe we could help you!" said Nami.

"Hey Nami-san, Mr. Prince is back." Said Sanji suddenly.

Nami turned and looked at Sanji angrily.  Then she proceeded to beat on him to shut him up.

Then she looked back at the men.  "We'll help you…but for a price!" she said.  I knew it was strange that she was being so willing to help for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

"Whatever you want, we'll give you." Said the Village Leader.  "Even though we have more intelligence and technology than the women, when it comes to brute strength, they vastly outweigh us.  Literally."

Nami discussed with the Village Leader the price for…quite a while actually.  It got to the point where I was becoming very bored and might have potentially left to go and explore this new little village we were in but she abruptly turned around when her negotiations were done.

"All right, we're going to go and find that Prince and Princess!" she declared.

"The determined Nami-san is so charming!!" yelled Sanji.

"Where do we start looking?" I asked Nami, trying to ignore Sanji.

"At the Village of Women!" Nami answered, reaching for her map again.  "It's not too far.  We're just going to go there and talk to them."

We began our journey to the Village of Women.  I decided to check my inventory to make sure I was all ready and stocked up when a battle occurred since I was the vital trump card.  However, I stumbled across an apron.  A pink apron.  Someone had put a pink apron in my bag.  Hm…I wonder who it was?  Could it have possibly been the only one who has a pink apron on our ship?  He probably thought that I wouldn't care.  I was going to tell him to carry it himself, but I figured that I had a bag anyway so there wasn't any point.  Plus, it's not like it weighed a lot anyway.

"How much further until we get to that village?" I asked.

"Oh!" said Nami, which told me that she had just remembered something important that she had originally intended to tell us but didn't end up doing that for one reason or another.  "That reminds me.  Maybe I should tell you that the women of this island are a little more hostile than the men and are less likely to listen to reason."

"Nami-san…they pulled guns on us and called you fat." Said Sanji.  "And you are not fat."

Nami paused and looked at Sanji.  Then she faced us both again, so I guess she was just making sure he wasn't going to continue.  "Meaning…you two should probably hide while I speak with them." She finished.

Just then, we passed by a sign that said 'Welcome to Village of Woman' written sloppily while spelling a few words wrong.

"But Nami-san, I want to see these absurdly strong women." Sanji said.

"You'll have to see them from your hiding place then." Nami replied as she pointed to a small bush.

"YES OF COURSE NAMI-SA~~~N!!" cheered Sanji as he jumped behind the bush.  I got behind it as well.  Not because I was scared or anything, just because Nami had advised it and I KNEW she had a plan and I didn't want it to go wrong.  Not that I'd make it go wrong but I had to… uh… make sure that Sanji didn't do anything stupid!

The women of the village were much larger and more hideous than I had thought they would be.  I knew Sanji was surprised, too, because he said; "They are a petrifying sight." Just so he wouldn't feel stupid, I agreed with him even though I was BY FAR the opposite of afraid of them.  I could have easily taken all of them on with one hand tied behind my back with a blindfold on and everything.  

Nami returned after discussing some stuff with the large women.  "They sent their leaders off to the Village of Men a little while ago," she whispered.  "Over in this direction."  She began to hurry off but NOT going even in the general vague area where the Village of Men was.

"But that's not the direction we came from!" I told her as I followed.

"I know." She answered.  "But we have to catch up with them before they do anything hostile to the Village of Men!"

"The caring Nami-san is so CHARMING!!!" Sanji exclaimed as he frolicked happily with a big dopey grin on his face.

"Thank you, Sanji." Nami said with a frustrated expression.

I followed Nami, though I didn't know exactly why we were doing this in the first place.  I mean, it's not like it benefited us in any way to stop a war between a tribe of humungous women and a tribe of tiny men.  I made it clear that I didn't believe we should be bothering with this and just find Luffy and Zoro and go back to the ship, but it didn't appear as though I was being listened to.  Just then I was going to scold my crew for ignoring their captain, we were suddenly attacked by Zoro.

Luckily, I was able to fend him off and protect Nami and Sanji who were both terrified.  And, Nami made sure that we all knew the extent of her horror when she started screaming at Zoro for directing anything pointy at her.

She suddenly turned and began speaking to Sanji.  I didn't know why she did that, but I decided to question Luffy (who was also there) on what he was doing.

"What are you all doing out here anyway?" I asked him.

"I'm the captain so I should be the one asking you all that question!" he said.  Even though I knew very well that I was really the captain, sometimes I had to play along with Luffy so he wouldn't do anything reckless.

"We're looking for the Village Leaders of the Village of Women." I told him.

"Oh!" said Luffy as if he had just realized something important.  "That's us."

I didn't know quite how to react to this considering we had been on the island for an hour… MAYBE an hour and a half.  How could they have possibly become the village leaders of a village complied strictly of women twice their size?  Unless they had been here before, which didn't seem likely, I couldn't fathom why they would possibly hold such a title.

"YOU TWO are the village leaders?" said Nami, taking the words right out of my mouth.  "How?  WHY?"

"Uh, no, just Luffy, not me." Zoro said.

"No, we both worked TOGETHER to beat the large women!" Luffy said.

"So you beat up the women and they made you their leaders?" Nami said, continue to say what I didn't.

"Well, I guess that settles it then." Said Sanji.  "You two can just tell them not to rage war against the Village of Men."  I had thought of that plan a long time ago.  I didn't tell him because sometimes you have to give them that extra boost of confidence so they don't get discouraged.  The crew, I mean.  That's one of the captain's many jobs.  All of which I perform excellently.  

"But the Village of Men is the one that's raging war against US!" Luffy said. 

"Don't say US!" Zoro said since the fact that Luffy considered himself a Village Leader seemed to offend him.  "You're not REALLY part of their village!"

"I'm their leader!" Luffy said.

"Whatever it is, just tell them not to go to war." Nami said.  "And that's another conflict solved."

There was one thing that still irked me.  This whole war was supposed to be about the missing Prince and Princess so that meant that there was a gigantic woman and a midget man somewhere lost or kidnapped.  "What about the prince and princess?" I said and then regretted it a second later.  We could have left and gone back to the ship right then and there but now that I had introduced this other conflict, the others were pondering about this and finally came to the conclusion that it was our duty to find the Prince and Princess.

"We were just going to the Village of Men and DEMAND that they return the princess back home!" Luffy declared.

"But we just came from the Village of Men and they have the same problem." Nami said.

"What problem?" Luffy asked.

"THEY don't know where the Prince and Princess are either." Nami explained.

I knew it was all up to me to think of our next plan of action.  I thought and thought…if I were an evil kidnapper who was bent on putting the two villages at war and kidnapped their prince and princess… where would I hide them?

I looked around at my surroundings and then up to see that we stood right before a giant mountain.  Now, if I were a kidnapper, I would definitely keep my prisoners up on a mountain. "With our luck, they'll probably be at the top of that mountain." I said.

At first, I thought that no one had heard me, but then Luffy seemed to agree.  "I bet they are!" he declared as he reached his arm towards the mountain and seemed to grab a hold of it.  At first, I wasn't sure what was going on, but when he suddenly grabbed onto all of us and catapulted us towards the mountain, I realized that he was following my plan and going up there to search for the prince and princess.

I'm not sure what was going through my head at that point because I began to struggle to get free of Luffy.  In the end, I succeeded but I ended up just plummeting to my most certain doom.

Luckily for me, I didn't have far to fall since we were partially over the mountain anyway so I landed about halfway up to the top.  I'm not saying it was FUN or a COMFORTABLE landing, but it was certainly better than tumbling down the entire mountain.

After recovering from what COULD have been fatal wounds if it wasn't me sustaining them, I studied my new environment.  I appeared to be on a path that was slanted slightly, going around and around the mountain until it finally reached the top.  We seemed to encounter many mountains such as this one so I wasn't all THAT surprised.

Considering that the rest of my team was at the top of the mountain, I knew I would have to climb it to be reunited.  It's not like it was a tough climb, though, because I was walking on a path that hardly sloped at all until I would finally reach the top.  They must have been worried about me so I decided to hurry my way up and no matter how long it may take me, I couldn't very well let them down by NOT arriving and explaining our next plan of action.

I didn't walk for longer than five minutes before suddenly hearing a noise coming from around the bend.  My first instinct was to run away, but not because I was scared.  Only because… uh… I didn't feel like killing anything right then…

Instead, I peeked my head around the rock to see a sight that I had certainly never even come close to expecting.  I saw a gigantic teenage woman and a tiny teenage man engaged in the most passionate of kissing I had ever seen in my entire life.

No one would want to look at that, so I turned my head away and was about to start creeping DOWN the mountain when something occurred to me.  "Maybe they are the Prince and Princess!" I said out loud, but still to myself.  They had probably just escaped their lives as royalty to get a little bit of… er… alone time.  They probably didn't realize that their villages had declared war, blaming each other for the disappearance of their appointed child.

I didn't know quite how to interrupt them.  "Uh…" I stuttered and they both looked up and gasped in horrible surprise.

"Who are you?!" demanded the tiny man.  "You are too small to be a woman but far too large to be a man!"

"I'm uh…I'm a special subspecies of man!" I tried to explain.  "…Very god-like!"

"Me scared!" cried the large woman.

"I've just come to tell you that your villages are going to rage war because of your disappearances." I said, figuring that the best way to end this was to get right to the point.

"How can this be?" said the man.  But then he stood there, not doing anything about it.

"Well…" I began.

"We must figure out a way to persuade them not to go to war…" the man said, scratching his chin.

"I'm sure if you just went back then…" I started.

"Oh, by the way, my name is Cornelius." Said the man, reaching out his hand to shake mine.  I had to practically bend over to shake his.  "It's a great honor to meet a god-like subspecies of my own."

"I can see how you would be honored by my presence." I said.  "I am the great Captain and God Usopp."

"Me Ung." Said the woman.

"Yes, your long nose clued me in that you are not human." The man continued, even though he could have stopped right then and there and I would have been perfectly happy.  "Perhaps all gods have noses such as yours.  Do you know?"

"The Great Captain and God Usopp says: NO!" I answered.  "Only the most God-like of all the gods is permitted to have such a long and handsome nose!"

"What a privilege it is to meet you!" said Cornelius.

"Yes, yes," I said.  "But I am angered by your actions!  You must return to your villages at once!"

"If the Great God and Captain Usopp says, so it must be." Said Cornelius.  "Come, Ung, we must return for the wedding."

That all seemed WAY too easy.  Why had they run away in the first place when they were getting married ANYWAY?  There was no reason for sneaking away.  But I guess not everything has to be difficult.

"Me show you fastest way down mountain!" said Ung as she grabbed Cornelius and I and then jumped off the edge.  I ended up plummeting down a great distance anyway, even if it had been temporarily delayed.  We landed on the ground and created a big crater, shaking the world as we landed.

"Oh, Ung, you are by far the strongest woman in the Village!" said Cornelius as Ung put us both down.

"Cornelius embarrass Ung!" said Ung, blushing.

I felt as though I was constantly repeating myself.  "We should return to the villages now." I said once again.

"Yes, we must stop this war before it happens!" declared Cornelius.

With Ung leading the way and knocking over anything that may have gotten in our path, we got to the village in no time.  The Village of Women was much closer and it was Ung's native village so I could only assume that that's why we were there as opposed to… oh I don't know… the Village of Men?

I entered the village and struck a pose for all to see.  "I HAVE FOUND THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS!!!" I declared.

Then I took a good look at what was going on.  Pretty much the entire village was dressed in battle garb with their huge, blunt weapons.  Apparently, they must have been on their way to the Village of Men.

They stared at us quizzically for a moment until one of the women stepped forward.  "Ung!" she said happily.  "We so happy to see you!"

"Yes, all thanks to Usopp." She said, pointing at me.

"Uh, that's the Great God and Captain Usopp," I corrected.

"All hail Usopp!" said all the women as they got down on the ground and started bowing to me.  Even though I was slightly perturbed that they were calling me ONLY Usopp, I couldn't help but take it all in because they were bowing to me after all.  While they bowed, though, I could make out Nami and Luffy running around all the large women and towards me.

"How did you find them?!" Nami demanded as if she were angry.

"Easy!" I answered.  "I used my superb navigational and tracking skills to cleverly deduct their most likely position and then went to that very spot and, just as I predicted, they were there!"

"WOW!!" yelled Luffy.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!  WOW!!  WOW!!"

I couldn't help but laugh a little under my breath but just couldn't ignore the skeptical look on Nami's face, either.  "What, I FOUND them didn't I?" I said since she seemed, for some reason, mad at me.  "They're here aren't they?  I don't see what the problem is!"

"There's no problem." Nami answered with a sigh as she crossed her arms.

Oh well, I can't always know what she's thinking.

"This call for big feast!!" declared one of the women as they all stood up.  She then turned to Luffy.  "It okay, Village Leader?"

"Fine with me!" Luffy agreed.

"It okay, God Usopp?" the woman asked, looking at me.  "Grand feast in your honor!!"

"Of COURSE it's all right!" I said graciously.

"YOU'RE A GOD?!" Luffy said with THE most excited expression I have ever seen on anyone in my entire life.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!"

"Didn't you know?" I said, laughing out loud now.

The women threw away their weapons of mass destruction and instead pulled out their musical instruments and various fruits and exotic foods and even a few scented candles which didn't make very much sense to me.  Nami, Luffy and I were made the guests of honor for various reasons.  Me, because I was a god.  Luffy, because he was the Village Leader.  And Nami, because she was a woman, yet she was very tiny and that simply amazed them to the point in which it was kind of pathetic.

I don't know about Nami and Luffy, but I certainly had a grand ol' time.  Actually, I DID know that Luffy was having a grand time because he was constantly expressing that to us, making sure that we were aware.  He was also walking around with an enormous drum in his hands and a bunch of drumsticks in his mouth which…seemed odd… but this was Luffy so it wasn't THAT weird.  Nami, on the other hand, seemed to be pouting so that she could intentionally prevent herself from having a grand time.

All of a sudden, Cornelius rose up in his seat and tried to get everyone's attention.  He could hardly see over the table, even with his booster seat, so he got up on top of the table and started waving his arms around and yelling.

I enjoyed watching him struggle to get attention, but I figured that whatever he had to say might have been important so an intervention was in order!  I stood up and cleared my throat and the village fell completely silent as everyone inhabitant was hanging on my every word.

"I think Prince Cornelius has something to say!" I announced.

As soon as I did, the village erupted with cheers, happy by the mere fact that I had spoken to them.  I suppose I would be happy as well if a God had come to me and began speaking to me.  Although, I'll never really know what they will be like considering I am practically just like a God so a God would never have to speak to me.

"Thank you, Great God and Captain Usopp." Said Cornelius after the cheers had died down.  "Listen, everyone!  It seems to have slipped all of our minds that we must also travel to my village to inform them that I am all right and there is no reason to go to war!"

"That's right!" said Nami, slamming her hands down on the table.  "The Village of Men is probably on their way over here right now!"

The women screamed and ran around in a panic and an extremely unorganized fashion.

"But it's okay!!" Nami tried to scream over the ruckus.  "Because once they come here and see the prince and princess all right, the war will end before it even starts!"

The three of us ATTEMPTED to bring order to the village.  Actually, it was really only me and Nami.  I don't know what Luffy was doing.  He was just sitting there as if specifically refusing to do ANYTHING.

Suddenly, we heard a deep voice rumble through the air, "We have come to sacrifice your Beautiful and Fair Village Leader and Village Representative!"

Everyone stopped and turned around.  There was a giant mass of tiny men, probably the entire village, standing there with their laser guns raised.  I also noticed that they had Zoro and Sanji tied up in a cage and I KNEW that if Zoro and Sanji were unable to defeat them then there was certainly no hope for me no matter how god-like I may be!  So that was my cue to pretty much bow out without being noticed by anyone…but especially Nami.

I dove into the forest and hid behind a bush, observing from the outside.  It's not like I was afraid or anything because I most definitely could have had absolutely no trouble defeating the tiny men but uh…I had just eaten and I didn't want to get any cramps!!

Stuff happened, but I couldn't really tell from where I was because they were all out of earshot.  But there was a lot of talking, punting and then standing around.  Pretty soon, Everyone was happy and partying and I started to wonder what I had possibly missed while I had just been…waiting for my food to digest.  But I suppose they didn't need me after all but I had still been their inspiration.

"NO NEED TO THANK ME!!!" I declared, jumping out of the bush.  "All I want is for you to remember the name; USOPP!!"

Even though I had specifically told them not to thank me, a few women did anyway…as well as a few men as well.  And so did Luffy.

Then there was more drinking and eating.  And you know, Sanji never struck me as the kind to just chug drink after drink until he was just drunken out of his gourd but he was over there.  Doing that.  He even had them all lined up in front of them.  I always saw him as the type that would say, "No thank you, I'll stick with my single glass of fine wine." And then take a dainty little sip out of his fancy glass.

But I figured I would just ignore him and have my OWN share of drinking even though I was technically UNDER the drinking age.  And, since I was getting bored with just being with myself, I figured I would go and strike up a nice conversation with my good friend Zoro!  I could always look to him since he was such a nice guy.  I feel as though, out of everyone in my crew, I hold him with the most respect!  It's almost as if he's the only one I see eye to eye with.

Just as I walked over to him, he held a sword up to me.  At first, I thought he was kidding around because maybe he had been drinking too.  But no, he was standing there looking ridiculously furious and red faced, sweating, teeth clenched, breathing deeply and he even had a little vein on his forehead that was just…pulsating.

I never really got along with Zoro so I quickly walked away from him.  His temper was just a little over the edge for me and I couldn't see myself ever being friends with him.

I was gonna go and…I don't know…do stuff…but Nami came up to me.  "We're going to leave soon." She said.  "Let's get out of here during the party so we don't make a big deal about it.  There's a little boat over at the river down that path,"--she pointed down a path—"So take Sanji there and I'll get the other two."

"Why do _I _have to take Sanji over there?!" I said, only AFTER realizing that I had just whined quite obnoxiously.

"Because I said so." Nami answered.

I couldn't argue with THAT logic.  So I walked over to Sanji, who had drunken himself into unconsciousness, and lifted him up with only one hand and began walking down the path to where the river was.  I hadn't walked very far when Zoro suddenly came up behind me and begged to carry Sanji for me.  He was probably trying to apologize to me for his earlier attack so I wasn't going to turn him down so I allowed Zoro to struggle along while he dragged Sanji all the way to where a boat was.  There were no other boats around, so I assumed that this must have been the one that Nami had gotten for us.

I got in, Zoro tossed Sanji in and then got in himself.  We sat there for a moment in awkward silence so I started whistling.  

"Hey, stop that." Said Zoro.

"This is no way to apologize to me!" I said.

"What?" Zoro asked.

"Admit it, if I hadn't been so limber then you surely would have taken my head off!" I told him.

He didn't say anything for a minute.  He was probably contemplating his wrong doings.  "What?" he said suddenly.

Before I could scold him for attacking me and then NOT apologizing, Luffy suddenly came out of nowhere still carrying his drum except now it was filled with meat.  He also had a tiny little guitar too.

"Zoro, you forgot your ukulele." He said.  I wasn't even going to ask.  Zoro seemed to just be ignoring him as Luffy jumped in and the weight of the meat in his giant drum weighed the boat down in the water slightly.  Then we all waited for a while until Nami came down the path, dragging a giant bag that seemed, at a first glance, to be even bigger than she was.

"What's that?" I asked.

"IT'S SO BIG!!!" screamed Luffy.  "THAT'S AMAZING!!!"

"Just my payment for finding the Prince and Princess and ending the war." Nami replied.

"Hey, _I _was the one who found the Prince and Princess and ended the war!" I said, feeling somewhat offended that she was being compensated for my hard work.

"We're ALL going to be sharing it!" said Nami as she dropped the bag into the boat and then got in herself.  The boat creaked under all the new weight as Zoro grabbed the two oars and took it upon himself to row for us.  Well, since Zoro went and grabbed both oars then he CLEARLY didn't need me to do anything even though I would have, and probably would have done a better job than him at that.

We rowed until we were pretty far out to sea, about half way to where our boat was.  Then I started wondering…hadn't we docked at the island?  Where did this little boat come from?

I was about to ask Nami, but she suddenly shrieked.  "There's water in the boat!!" she screamed.  I looked down and then had a new thing to wonder about.  How is it that I was ankle deep in water and just did not notice it before?  It was probably because I was distracted with other wonders.

"We're too heavy!" I announced.  "Get rid of the treasure!"

"NEVER!!" yelled Nami.

I was a fool for going there… "All right…get rid of the meat!" I corrected myself as I went to throw the drum out of the boat.

"NEVER!!!" yelled Luffy as he protectively dove on top of his drum.

"We're SINKING!!" I reminded them all.  "Do we have any other deadweight that we can throw overboard?!"

It was silent.

"How about the cook?" Zoro asked.

"YEAH!!" said Nami and Luffy as Zoro tossed Sanji overboard.

"Wait a second!" said Luffy, standing up.  "THAT'S MY COOK!!"  And then Luffy jumped into the water and, of course, didn't come back up.

Zoro let out a loud groan and then jumped into the water as well.  Then it was just me and Nami in the boat for a while.

"It was a stupid idea to throw Sanji overboard." Said Nami suddenly.

"It wasn't MY idea!" I said defensively.  "YOU'RE the one who agreed to it!"

"I had to protect my treasure!" Nami answered as if that was really any sort of argument at all.  "Besides, I didn't see you doing anything to stop it!"

We waited for a moment so I started whistling again.  Long, awkward silences annoy me.  And even though my whistling was obviously annoying Nami, my little pet peeves were much more important.  But suddenly, water splashed up and there was Zoro with both Sanji AND Luffy!  Oh, he didn't have to do that.  He could have just gotten one of them and then…er…tagged me and I would have jumped in and saved the other one.  But, since he got them both, there was no need to do so.

Sanji was conscious again because he said something, but him being conscious seemed to offend Zoro since he just hit Sanji to knock him unconscious again.  I didn't see the sense in THAT.

We pulled Luffy up on the boat and I turned around to help pull Sanji up but Nami put her hand out to stop me.  "Actually, Zoro, we can't take anymore weight." Nami told Zoro.  "This is perfect.  If you and Sanji just swim then we won't sink!"

I looked at the rims of the boat to see that they were now reasonably above water without Zoro and Sanji's weight.

"But he can't swim!" said Zoro.  "He's unconscious!"

I was about to point out the fact that Zoro had been the one to knock him unconscious, but instead, Nami said, "Well whose fault is THAT Mr. Mermaid?!"  Mr. Mermaid was an…interesting insult.  I didn't catch WHY.  But Zoro didn't seem all that offended.  Probably because it came out of nowhere.  Or maybe it's some kind of 'Before Usopp joined our crew' joke.

"How about one of you switch places with him?" Zoro said.

"I have to row!" I said immediately, jumping over to the oars and situating myself.  Then I pretended not to listen to the conversation and took great interest in making sure that the oars were PERFECTLY aligned with each other to get maximum rowing efficiency.  Just then, Luffy woke up.

"Ah, Luffy!" I said.  "You're awake!  Now you can row!"

"Yeah!" said Luffy as he stood up and struck a pose.  But he didn't make any movement for the oars.

"Here." I said, handing him the oars.

"I'LL BE THE LOOKOUT!!!" Luffy declared, running over to the front of the boat and looked in the direction to where our ship was.

I couldn't blame him for just trying to get out of doing work.  He probably genuinely got distracted by the fact that there was no one being the lookout and felt the desire to fill the spot.  He WOULD have done the work, if someone had been the lookout.  Besides, it's not like I NEEDED his help.  I could have rowed all by myself.

Nami looked up from her conversation with Zoro and gave me the thumbs up.  "All right!" she said.  "Let's get going!"

It appeared as though Zoro was treating our journey like it was a race as he swam as fast as he could with Sanji over his shoulder.  I wasn't going say anything since he seemed to be pumped up about SOMETHING as he climbed up the ladder to the boat before I had even reached it.

Luffy climbed up first and then I did.  When I got to the top, Zoro was just standing there glaring forward with his arms crossed, looking angry.  Maybe he was offended that I hadn't tried my hardest to beat him in the 'race' but whatever the reason was, I wasn't about to get on Zoro's bad side so I slowly backed away from him, not making any sudden movements that would potentially throw him into an uncontrollable rage.

I went over to the head of the ship where Luffy was already sitting on his ram seat.  I took a last look at Silver River, even though I couldn't really see it since it was dark.  But I was glad to finally have gotten off that island.  Everything about it just seemed to be so messed up as if everyone and everything on that island was on crack or something.  But it's not like that was something different or anything since we so frequently came across weird crack islands like this one and end up saving the day.  If it wasn't for me, the two Villages would be warring right now and we would probably be stuck right in the middle of it.  Once again, I was the hero and I truly believe that everyone else did pretty much nothing that went towards stopping the war.

"REMEMBER THE NAME, USOPP!!" I screamed the island even though we were probably a good mile away from it.  "REMEMBER THAT HE IS YOUR GOD AND SAVIOR!!!"

"Ooh, you're a god?" said Luffy.  "AMAZING!!"

"Yes, I am a god." I answered.  "I'm surprised that you didn't know that you've had a god traveling with you this entire time."

"I didn't!!" exclaimed Luffy.  "That's amazing!!  That's SO amazing!!"

I let out a loud yawn.  "The Great God and Captain Usopp now must retire to his quarters!" I announced as I began to walk to where our room was.

"I'm the captain." Luffy said.  It irked me that he still believed that he was the captain of this ship, but I decided to let it slide for now since it had been a very long day.  So I made my way back to the room and changed into my blue pajamas with the little yellow stars on them with the matching night hat.  Zoro was already snoring and Sanji was just lying there like an unconscious lump so I jumped up onto the hammock that hung the highest off the ground.  I snuggled up with my teddy and went to sleep.


	5. Sanji's Day

Sanji's Day

It was still dark outside when I could hear a voice screaming, "ALL BLUE!!"  We had arrived in All Blue?  I had to know for myself so I got out of bed and ran up to the deck.

"It DOES exist, I knew it!" I declared before anyone else could claim that they had been the one to bring it up in the first place.

"Was there any doubt that it didn't exist?" said Usopp.

"Of course there's been doubt." I said as I took out a cigarette and lit it.

Nami-san then emerged from her room looking charming as usual.  "Oh, we're at the island—" she began but I simply had to interrupt her to give her a proper morning greeting.  She smiled, winked and made a few gestures that confirmed my suspicions that she was madly in love with me.  "So anyway, we're approaching island Silver River."

She pointed at things on her map in a very provocative manner.  I pretended to be looking at her paper but I was actually looking at the charismatic Nami-san as she explained something that kind of just went in one ear and out the other.  It wasn't WHAT she said that I admired, it was the WAY she said it.

"And that's that." Said Nami-san.

"Nami-san, I have to compliment the charming way you explained that all." I said to her.

Nami-san was ABOUT to say something to me, but Luffy interrupted.  "I'm HUNGRY!!" he yelled at me.  "Make me something!"

"Not right now." I replied.

"Yes, Sanji, why don't you go and make breakfast?" Nami-san said.

"With love." I said in my 'Mr. Prince' voice as I hurried off to my kitchen to make Nami-san something.  I flicked my cigarette and lit a new one so I could get a fresh start.  I decided that I would have to make her a very special breakfast so I went to go and get the proper utensils I would require when I passed by a mirror.

Since I had just awaken, I was currently not as presentable as I would like Nami-san to see me.  So, after working with myself for a good while, I finally accepted my appearance and deemed myself ready to make Nami-san… um… a drink?  Oh right!  I was making Nami-san one of my special drinks.  I put on my apron because soiled clothes are not suave.

I don't think everyone knows how much work goes into making these drinks.  They don't know just how special they are and how I slave over them to make them actually perfect.  Of course, I was only making one for Nami-san.

But then the unthinkable happened!  Cigarette ash dropped into Nami-san's special drink!

"Oh drat…" I said under my breath.  I must admit, I might have overreacted but I didn't want anything to spoil Nami-san's drink.  So this meant I would have to give the ruined special drink to someone else because I can't very well throw it away.  This also meant that I would have to make a special drink for everyone.  However, I wouldn't make them all quite as special as the new drink I was going to make for Nami-san.

When they were all finished, arranged them nicely on a platter with a doily under each one so they were all encircling Nami-san's special drink.  I like to be decorative because even though people don't seem to appreciate it, they unconsciously are impressed.

I decided to put a little skip in my step as I exited the kitchen just so people would notice me and my special drinks.

"I made some special drinks!" I announced.

"Sanji!" said Nami-san lovingly since she was standing right outside the kitchen door waiting for me to emerge.  "Where were YOU while we were landing and doing all that work?!"  

I had long since decoded the secret code of women.  By saying, 'Where were you?', she meant, 'What were you doing for me?'  And, by saying, 'While we were landing,' she was attempting to confuse the male species so we would be tricked into saying something foolish.  But I had her all figured out.  I'm THAT suave.

"Nami-san," I said, presenting the platter to her.  "I made you a drink."

"That doesn't answer my question!" Nami-san said.

She appeared to be angry with me.  I prepared an entire speech to compliment her on how beautiful she looked while she was angry.  First, I would say how lovely her clenched teeth looked over her full, red lips and then I would tell her that her eyes sparkled beautifully when she was mad…but I had to shorten it down since she probably wanted her special drink.  "Nami-san, I have to say that you are quite charming when you're angry." I told her.

I'm good.

However, I noticed that no one was dashing over to me to retrieve their special drinks.  Did they not know how much effort I put into them?  Of course they didn't!  How could they?

Ah, well.  They can't go to waste.  I took the special drink closest to me and began to drink it, only to choke on a piece of cigarette ash a second later.

"Sanji, why are you drinking all those?" asked Usopp.  "I'll have one."

"Uh…sure." I said, feeling a bit foolish that I had automatically assumed that no one wanted any drinks just because they hadn't sprinted over right away to grab one.  So I gave Usopp and Nami-san their special drinks but then took that opportunity to look around and notice that Zoro and Luffy were absolutely nowhere to be found.  Maybe it was a good thing, though, because I had already finished their special drinks.

"Where are Zoro and Luffy?" I asked Nami-san since she always has the answers.

"I'm sure they're around the boat somewhere." Nami-san replied.

"No, I saw them go over to the island." Usopp said.

"WHAT?!" screamed Nami-san so loudly that I almost dropped the empty glasses that were on the platter.  "We have to go to shore and get them."

"Why?" asked Usopp.  "I thought you said we were just going to pass by this island after getting supplies."

"That's why we have to go and pick them up!" I intervened.  "Right, Nami-san?"

"What about the amazingly strong women and hideously conniving men?" Usopp said as he got that tone in his voice that said that he was definitely afraid.  I couldn't have him second guessing Nami-san even though his question just then was a bit frightful.

"Whatever Nami-san says, goes!" I declared, getting in Usopp's face.  Yes, it was true that I was doing this for Nami-san but I was also doing it for the amazingly strong women that lived on this island.  I mean, what's a conniving man going to do?  Start conniving?  Well…I guess they're already conniving.  Perhaps they would just continue to connive.

So we climbed off the ship and onto the land that was, of course, swarming with vegetation.  There weren't any civilizations as far as I could see so I couldn't help but ponder on the whereabouts of these amazingly strong women.

"Do you think Zoro and Luffy went to the Men's Village or the Women's Village?" said Nami-san as she took out a map that she had made with LOVE!

"They have separate villages?" I said happily.  "Let's visit the Women's village!  I bet they're there!  That's where I would go!"

"Well, if we were looking for you then we'd definitely look there." Nami-san said, rolling her eyes.  I had probably made her jealous but can I help it if I'm such a suave lady-killer?  Nami-san began to lead the way and Usopp and I followed.

I kept my eyes peeled for any amazingly strong women that may have strayed from their village and require my assistance to lead them home.  We soon came across a sign just then that read, 'Welcome to the Village of Men'.  It took a moment for that to sink in before I realized that Nami-san had NOT taken us to the Village of Women but had, in fact, taken us to the Village of Men!

"Nami-san!" I said.  "This is the Village of Men!"

"I know." Nami-san responded.  "If we were to run into hostile natives, would you rather attack a man or a woman?"

"A man of course." I said.  "Why?"

"Because, of the three of us, you're the only one who can attack and I don't need you melting over a woman instead of attacking her if she tries to kill us!" Nami-san said.  But I knew the real reason.  It was because she wanted me all to herself.

"I resent that!" said Usopp.  "I would attack any woman!"

Nami-san clearly trusted me with her life vastly more than she trusted Usopp which only further proved her love for me.

I looked at the village that was in the distance.  However, after a moment's thought, I realized that it was actually very small and not in the distance as I had originally assumed.  The houses were about a third the size of a small garage.

"What's up with these tiny houses?" said Usopp.

Just then, the doors to the tiny houses flung open a bunch of little teeny men with laser guns emerged.  These men were about three foot nothing and were dressed in futuristic type clothes but I was a little astounded that they were pointing their guns at _us _because we had done absolutely nothing to provoke or upset them.

"Don't move!" yelled one of the men with an extremely high-pitched voice.

"How dare you point that gun at Nami-san!" I scolded them.

"We will shoot!" said another one.

"You wouldn't shoot the representatives from the Women's Village!" said Nami-san cleverly.

"Yes, we are GODS in the Women's Village!!" Usopp immediately agreed.

Just then, another man who was just as small as the rest while also wearing a crown approached us.  "Yes…we can see that you are women." Said the man in a voice that was lower than mine.  Even lower than Zoro's.  It was weird.  

But, what was even weirder was that he said wo_men_ as in more than one when Nami-san was clearly the ONLY woman among us!

"We know this because you all are very large." Said the man who I could only assume was the leader.

Leader or not, he had absolutely no right to call Nami-san large because everyone knows that women hate to be referred to as large, big or fat. "Nami-san is NOT fat!" I defended her.

"Just ignore her." Said Nami-san as she elbowed me.  I wondered if she expected to hurt.  Because it didn't.

"Nami-san, I know they may be confused on our genders but you know very well that I am a man." I said to her.  "Now let's leave and go to the Village of Women."

"Have you come from the Village of Women to aid us in our search for the Prince and the Princess?" asked the Leader of the Men.

"No." said Nami-san.  "What happened?"

Prince?  I'm a prince.  I could very well take over the role as 'The Prince' of this village and marry off to the princess.  Unless, of course, they were siblings which would be sort of awkward.  I wish I had my yellow sunglasses so I could truly be Mr. Prince.  Ah, I DO have my sunglasses!  Oh wait, I'm still wearing my apron.

What is this?  Why didn't anyone tell me that I was still wearing my apron?  I can't be Mr. Prince with an apron on.  So, I took my apron off and put my sunglasses on.  I couldn't leave my apron behind so…well, Usopp appeared to be paying attention to the tiny men so I quickly slipped the apron into his bag.  I'm sure he wouldn't mind since I made him a special drink after all.  So, I lit myself a new cigarette and unbuttoned my top button so I was the epitome of my Mr. Prince nature.

"Hey Nami-san, Mr. Prince is back." I said in my most suave voice.

Nami-san then got a little violent but I don't think I'll go into very much detail.  But she did look remarkably charming.

I was quieter as Nami-san finished up her conversation with the men of the village.  At least she didn't break my Mr. Prince sunglasses.  But my cigarette was a little crumpled, so I lit up a new one.

Finally, Nami-san turned around and faced Usopp and I.  "All right, we're going to go and find that Prince and Princess!" she declared.

"Nami-san, the way you are so determined is just so charming." I complimented her.

"Where do we start looking?" asked Usopp.

"At the Village of Women!" Nami-san answered as she pulled out her map that she had made with LOVE!  And I was glad that we were finally going to the Village of Women so I could see their amazingly strong nature.  "It's not too far.  We're just going to go there and talk to them."

She lead the way again and we both followed again.  Not that I minded following Nami-san, because I don't.  I would follow Nami-san to the ends of the earth if she asked me too.  In fact, I would follow her to the ends of the earth even if she didn't ask me too.  Actually, I think I would very well follow her to the ends of the earth even if she specifically told me not to do so.  Which, of course, would never happen.

"Nami-san, did you make that map?" I asked her.

It was a moment or two before she replied to me.  "No, not this one." Nami-san answered.

…Okay, maybe she didn't MAKE it with love, but she sure did hold it… and carry it… and look at it with love!

"How much further until we get to that village?" asked Usopp.

"Oh!" said Nami-san.  "That reminds me.  Maybe I should tell you that the women of this island are a little more hostile than the men and are less likely to listen to reason."

"Nami-san…they pulled guns on us and called you fat." I pointed out.  "And you are not fat."

She smiled at me and I knew she appreciated my comment and would have confessed her undying love to me right then if not for Usopp's hindering presence.  "Meaning…you two should probably hide while I speak with them." She finished.

Just then, we passed by a sign that said 'Welcome to Village of Woman' written sloppily while spelling a few words wrong.

"But Nami-san, I want to see these absurdly strong women." I said.

"You'll have to see them from your hiding place then." Nami-san replied as she pointed to a small bush.

"Whatever you say, Nami-san." I said as Usopp and I got behind it and she walked into the village.  A few horrible, hideous, disgusting ape-like women came out of their terribly constructed huts to see her.  Even from my hiding place, I was appalled with their appearance.

I could hear Usopp's teeth chattering from beside me.  "They are a petrifying sight." I said as he nodded in agreement.  Nami-san spoke with them for a few minutes and they seemed perfectly harmless to her, probably because she was a female as well.  I wondered how such humungous women could possibly marry such tiny men.

She returned to us.  "They sent their leaders off to the Village of Men a little while ago," she whispered to us.  "Over in this direction."  She began to hurry off.

"But that's not the direction we came from!" Usopp pointed out but we followed her anyway.

"I know." She answered.  "But we have to catch up with them before they do anything hostile to the Village of Men!"

"Nami-san, the way you care for these two villages is so just so blissfully charming." I said.

"Thank you, Sanji." Said Nami-san.  Oh yeah, she wants me.

We ran through the forest area with Usopp complaining the whole way.  I was going to tell Nami-san just how charming she looked while she was running with that determined look on her face, striving to save the villages, but we suddenly pushed our way through a bushy area only to be faced with Zoro with his swords drawn as if he were attacking something.

It took me a second to realize that he had his swords drawn AT US, but I'm pretty sure that he realized it at pretty much the same time because he started putting his swords away but that's when Nami-san got over her shock and all hell broke loose.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" screamed Nami-san angrily.  Zoro fumbled for an excuse, but he had none.

"That's right, Nami-san." I said, nodding since I was always going to take her side no matter what.  Of course, it's always a good idea to take Nami-san's side since she's always right and Zoro…well, he's pretty much NEVER right.  And he usually has no ground to stand on.  Especially when he's fighting with Nami-san or myself.

"YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME!!!" Nami-san continued.

"I wouldn't have allowed it, Nami-san." I assured her.

"DON'T JUST POINT YOUR SWORD AT ANYTHING THAT MOVES!!" Nami-san screamed, but I doubt Zoro was paying attention anymore so I figured it was just my opportunity to score points with Nami-san.

"Yes, Zoro, it is very irresponsible." I added.

"Sanji, be quiet." Said Nami-san.  She had lowered her voice and was not yelling at ME, of course, because I had just scored all those points with her.  

"I simply agree with you, Nami-san." I said.

"I don't need you doing that though." Nami-san said.  "I can take care of myself just fine."

"You are incredibly charming when you are so independent." I complimented her because everyone knows that women need to be constantly complimented or else they might very well just go crazy with neglect.  So, that means, that even if she is looking particularly plain, you must still tell her how beautiful and charming she is.  Though, Nami-san never looks plain.  She always looks beautiful.

Luffy's high pitched, "Oh!" suddenly jerked me back into reality and was soon followed up with a, "That's us."

I paused, hoping that maybe someone else would fill in the blanks for me, and of course, Nami-san came to my rescue!  "YOU TWO are the village leaders?  How?  WHY?"

"Uh, no, just Luffy, not me." Zoro said.

"No, we both worked TOGETHER to beat the large women!" Luffy said.

"So you beat up the women and they made you their leaders?" Nami said.

I appeared to be the only one who realized that Zoro and Luffy being the leaders of the Village of Women, no matter how strange and unnatural it may seem, could actually work in our favor.  If the Village of Women did whatever their leaders said, then we could end the war before it even began.  Since I was obviously the only one who had thought of this brilliant plan, I decided to state it.

"Well, I guess that settles it then.  You two can just tell them not to rage war against the Village of Men."

"But the Village of Men is the one that's raging war against US!" Luffy said in a very confrontational fashion that made me feel that I was being attacked.

"Don't say US!" Zoro said.  "You're not REALLY part of their village!"

"I'm their leader!" Luffy said.

"Whatever it is, just tell them not to go to war." Nami-san said.  Ahh, she found my idea intelligent and a good alternative to going to war.  Yet another ambiguous hint telling me that she pined for me that I was thankfully astute enough to pick up on.  "And that's another conflict solved."

"What about the prince and princess?" asked Usopp, though I was surprised that he didn't just say, 'Okay!  Let's go back to the ship!!'

"We were just going to the Village of Men and DEMAND that they return the princess back home!" Luffy declared.

"But we just came from the Village of Men and they have the same problem." Said Nami-san.

"What problem?" asked Luffy.

"THEY don't know where the Prince and Princess are either." Nami-san explained ever so patiently and charmingly.

"With our luck, they'll probably be at the top of that mountain." Said Usopp as he pointed at a very large mountain that stood before us.  I looked up at the top of the mountain.  It was very high up.  I had to agree with Usopp, though, because things tended to be atop extremely high mountains like this one.  Thankfully, this mountain appeared to have a path that seemed to lead to the top but paths like that can be misleading and for all we knew, it was a trap that the Prince and Princess had gotten themselves caught in!

Suddenly, I was knocked to the ground forcefully.  After I had regained my composure, I took note of the fact that Zoro was now on top of me and was just… not moving.  After a moment of waiting for him to move, I decided to assert myself.

"Zoro, that was a little weird." I told him.

"Yeah, I know." He said as if this sort of thing happened every single day, even though it did not but we all knew that.  "The Prince and Princess on the mountain?  Where would he get a ridiculous idea like that?"

What would Nami-san think if she saw this?  Would she possibly get the wrong idea?  I was feeling very uncomfortable and then began to feel slightly sick as Zoro just continued to lie there, enjoying whatever he was doing.  Finally, he must have saw that I was unhappy with our current positioning so he moved himself and stood up, clearing his throat.

"That was weird." I repeated, searching for an explanation as I lit a cigarette since he had knocked my previous one to the ground and there was no way I was going to pick up a cigarette that had been on the dirty ground.

"You already said that." Said Zoro as if he were the victim.

I looked around a bit and found that no one was there except for Zoro and myself.  Had everyone gone somewhere while I was distracted?  Most importantly of all, where was Nami-san?  And why had she left me without saying anything?  Why had she left me at all?

"Hey, where's Nami-san?" I asked Zoro.

He looked at me as if I owed him something.  I was a bit surprised that he seemed so… I don't know… perturbed by my mere presence.  He was the one who had pushed ME to the ground so it's not like I had assaulted him and he had any reason to feel awkward with me.  But what annoyed me the most was that he wasn't answering.  In fact, he didn't look as though he was even thinking about answering me.  It could be that he didn't know, but couldn't he have said, 'I don't know'?

"Where's Nami-san?" I said, since he was not answering me.

This repetition only seemed to increase the look of intrigue on his face as he continued to NOT answer me.  He was clearly thinking of something else, but did he need to do all that thinking right now while I was trying to ask him something?  Perhaps he just didn't like my Nami-san-centric questions, so I decided to rephrase.

"Where's EVERYONE for that matter?" I tried.

"What do you want from me?!" Zoro lashed out suddenly.  "Shut up you stupid cook!"

That was…sudden.  "I missed everything when you assaulted me!" I said, raising my voice to the occasion.  He had done so first, after all.  "Where did everyone go and why is it only you here!"

"Hey, I saved you from being catapulted into the sky by our captain." He said, though I couldn't figure out what significance that had to my question.

Still, such a phrase as 'catapulted into the sky' captured my attention.  Then I realized that Nami-san had been violently catapulted into the sky.  "Catapulted into the sky?!" I gasped.  "Nami-san?!"

"Yeah, they went to the top of the mountain." Zoro said, pointing.  This time, I decided not to look at the mountain because last time I had done that, I had been assaulted AND I had missed a lot. 

Zoro suddenly started walking towards the mountain and going up the pathway.  After sitting there for a moment, I realized that he was planning on scaling the mountain and was not going to formally invite me.  He had no right to be so rude to me.

"Hey, where are you going?!" I demanded of him

"Where does it look like I'm going?" he said.

Obviously, he was looking for Usopp, Luffy and Nami-san.  "So we're just going to blindly make our way up the mountain?!" I said, looking up.

"We KNOW they're up there…" he said with an accusing glare.

How were we possibly going to find the three of them on such an enormous mountain?  Thoughts such as these obviously never crossed his mind.  "It's a big mountain!" I said as he continued to walk.

He didn't even reply that time so I gave up.  We followed the path and it, more or less, was hazardless.  Zoro wasn't much of a conversationalist so I didn't even both to try and converse with him so it proved to be a boring trip.  So I thought of Nami-san and how she must have been worrying about my well being right now as I worried about her.

Up ahead I saw a sign.  I peered at it to see that it said, 'Danger: Quicksand Ahead!'  I don't think Zoro saw the sign because he just kept going.

"Watch out for the quicksand." I said, but, as he got closer and closer to the sign, I began to wonder if he had listened to me.  "Did you see the sign?  There's quicksand up ahead.  Hey, it's right where you're going to walk!"  I kicked him in the head, lightly, as not to injure him, but he just kept going.  Then we were both standing in the quicksand so I kicked him again, harder, and then hopped out of it before I could sink at all.

"If you had LISTENED to me then—" I began but Zoro interrupted me.

"Shut up," he said.  I shook my head but couldn't help but feel slightly satisfied as he discovered that he was already knee deep in the quicksand.  And I also found it slightly amusing as he struggled a little bit to free himself but it was already too late to just hop out as I had before.

"There you go." I said, sounding most suave, especially compared to how foolish he was sounding.  "See the sign?"

"I've been in worse situations than this." Zoro said.  True as it was, he was still pretty deep in quicksand.

After he had been such a jerk to me, I didn't know if I wanted to help him out of the situation.  I knew, of course, that I had to but I still didn't WANT to.  "I don't know if I want to help you." I said, hoping to make him squirm a bit.  But what was I expecting?

"I don't want your help." He said, and he probably didn't.

I saw the stones that had been set up for people to walk across.  I did so and Zoro watched me, sort of resentfully that I had seen them and he hadn't and now I was on solid ground and he was waist deep in the quicksand.  "How do you plan on getting out of it?" I asked him.

"Simple." He said.  But no more.  And then he stopped and paused as if he had that much time to just stop there and think some more.

"I could help you." I told him as the quicksand continued to rise.

"I don't need it." Zoro replied.

I guess Zoro didn't understand the severity of the situation just yet.  "It would be faster and easier and less life threatening if you let me help you now." I said, treating him like a child so he might understand.

"If you've got nothing to do, why don't you go and cook something?" he said with a scoff.  I chose to ignore that and decided right then and there that I wouldn't help him even if he asked me to.  But then, I saw that he continued to NOT move as if his sheer will would lift him from the quicksand and carry him to safety.

"You know," I said.  "If you're not going to take my help, you should at least TRY and get out."

He just frowned as the quicksand began to cover his shoulders.  He was angry at me for getting the best of him once again.  So, while I waited for him to come around and ask for help, I lit a new cigarette and enjoyed it.

"Put that out right now." Zoro ordered suddenly.  I looked at him, somewhat in surprise.

"What?" I asked, not positively certain what he was referring to.

"Stop smoking." He said.  "Forever."

There was a lot I could have said to that.  I could have gone on forever with endless possibilities of statements and clarifications, but we were short on time so I merely said; "I ALWAYS smoke, it's never offended you before."

"Well maybe I'm just irritable because I'm neck deep in quicksand and the only other person around who could possibly do ANYTHING to help me is just standing there smoking, acting as though no one is around sinking in quicksand and is, instead, filling that person's lungs with second hand smoke." He said.

All right, he was begging for help but was too proud to just say, "Please help me, Sanji." Even though that's clearly what he was saying.

"Is that a demented way to ask me for help?" I asked him because I needed him to admit it even though I knew it very well.

I was going to wait for him to ask me for help.  And I waited and waited and waited as the quicksand got higher and higher and higher and he just stared at me.  I guess he would rather die than ask me for help.  It wasn't until he was entirely submerged did I realize that he couldn't have asked for help now even if he wanted to and it was going to be me who swallowed his pride today.

I walked out onto the stepping stones to about the area where he had gone under and reached my hand down until I came across something that couldn't have been anything except for Zoro's hard head.  I grabbed a hold of his shirt collar and pulled him up and then dragged him to the solid area and dropped him on the ground.

I wasn't expecting a 'thanks', but I also wasn't expecting what he said.  "It's about time you rescued me." He said, still short for breath but feeling as though he NEEDED to insult me, even after I had saved his life.

"Aren't you even going to thank me?" I asked.

"I never asked for your help." He said, standing up.  "You're the one who decided to do something about it.  I was going to be just fine without you.  Now stop wasting time because we have to get to the top of the mountain."

That's the last time I save Zoro's life.

I also decided that I didn't want to speak with him anymore.  As we walked, I had a lot of free time to take in my surroundings, but I kept getting the nagging feeling that I had been there before which was completely untrue because I had never climbed this mountain before.  However, Zoro suddenly stopped and read a sign that he had noticed this time; "Welcome to the Village of Men?" he said, sounding puzzled.

This seemed a bit odd.  This whole time, Nami-san had only described two villages, one entirely male and one entirely female.  Now all of a sudden, there was another male village.  "There are two strictly male villages?" I vocalized.

"What are you talking about?" Zoro said.

"Nami-san, Usopp and I have already been to the Village of Men and it wasn't at the top of the mountain." I explained as I took another look at what was around us.  Then I noted a giant mountain that looked all too familiar.  I looked back at Zoro who was still staring at the sign ever so quizzically.  "Hey, why is the mountain over there and we're over here?"

He looked at the mountain.  "Hm… we seem to have gone astray…" he said.

Astray?  That certainly put things in lighter terms.  "We got lost." I translated.

"Don't say it like that!" he yelled passionately.

"How could you have possibly NOT noticed when we went DOWNHILL on our way down the mountain?!" I yelled at him since HE had started the yelling.  I wished that I hadn't said it, though, because Zoro was smart enough to point out the fact that I hadn't noticed the downhill either.

"You didn't notice either." He said.

Quick think quick think quick think…"I just didn't say anything." I said finally.

"Liar." He accused me.  I don't know why my following emotion was offence because I was, after all, lying.

I noticed that Zoro's attention had turned away from our discussion and was now paying attention to the mob of the Village Men.  Oh those men.  Their small size frightens me slightly.

"Are you going to back me up or are you just going to stand back and watch like last time?" Zoro said randomly.

Why would he want to harm the men?  They may be small and scary and possess deep voices, but they're definitely not hostile.  Plus, what did he mean by 'like last time'?  "Pardon me?" I said just as the leader of the men stepped forward.

"Representative of the Village of Women, who is this strange woman you are traveling with?" he said, addressing the question towards me.

I took a moment to recall that I was this representative he was referring to.  Then that meant that Zoro was the 'strange woman'.  Ha.  Ha ha.  "Ah, well, this strange woman just so happens to be the Village Leader of the Village of Women." I said, going along with it.

Zoro looked incredibly astonished that anyone could mistake HIM for a woman.  I was slightly astonished as well.  I figured it was just because he was a lot bigger than the men so they automatically assumed that he must be of the female variety.  I mean, according to them, I was a woman as well and we all know that that's not true!  "What are you talking about?" Zoro asked me.

"How did this woman become leader of the Village of Women?" asked the Village Leader.  "She is very small."  At least they could distinguish between the Village Women and the two of us.

"It is clear because she is the most beautiful of them all!" said another one of the tiny men.

"You're right!" said a third.  "Her beauty far surpasses any of the others!  We should have our prince marry HER!  I'm sure she'll be very good at conceiving large and masculine men as well as some petite, feminine women."

Oh, so I'm not the most beautiful?  I swear, if I were a woman, I would definitely date myself.  But there was no way I would date Zoro.  Even if I were to dig as deep as to look at his personality but that would only turn me off even more.  Besides, he had no femininity whatsoever and I began to feel offended for every woman in the world.  Even the hideous, primitive women back at the Village of Women.

Zoro looked like he was going to attack the men, so I kicked him and pulled him aside to give him a short talk.  "Zoro, this is the Village of Men." I explained.  What did I say?  Short talk.

"Yes, I noticed." Zoro replied, looking angry.  "The village of the very tiny and very insulting men."

"You probably look different from their perspective." I said, also trying to find a reason why they would ever consider Zoro to be a woman.  Women were so much more beautiful than that.

"But they've all seen women before," he said.  "After all, there's a village compiled entirely of women just on the other side of this island!"

"Yes but…they are very large…and very hideous…" I couldn't help but say.  But still, they were more beautiful women than Zoro.  Because they WERE women.  And Zoro…well, he's NOT.

"ENOUGH!!" came the booming voice of the Village Leader as he pointed his laser gun at us.  I couldn't help but be taken aback by such a threat, especially since we had been so friendly with them.  "We are through with negotiations!"

Negotiations?  As I recalled, we were merely talking about how beautiful Zoro was.  Well, _I _wasn't doing such a thing, but they were.  So technically, the conversation we had just had was pretty much the opposite of anything that could be even considered negotiations.  "Were we negotiating?" I said.

"You have failed to return our prince to us!" he continued, completely disregarding my comment since he probably realized the validity of it.  "So, as irresistible as your beauty may be, since you are the leader of the village we are to rage war against, we have no choice but to do this!"

Then he raised his gun.  A gun?  Well!  I am certainly offended.  I waited for Zoro to do something but he only stood there and watched.  I wasn't about to fight an army of tiny men with guns by myself.

The men began to tie Zoro and I together.  I waited and waited for Zoro to do something.  I mean, isn't he the kind of person to just foolishly rush into battle, not caring if he gets shot with a laser gun?  If not, I had been horribly misinformed this whole time I had been a part of this crew.

We were brutally tossed into a cage and then carried off.  My legs were free so I could have easily escaped the cage but I assumed we were going off to the Village of Women.  This meant that we were getting a free ride.  This also meant that if I were to free us both at this point then we would have to go all the way to the Village of Women tied together like this.  Not to mention the fact that I was half expecting Zoro to just leap up and do something but I guess he had a soar throat or something because he kept clearing it…

We suddenly came to a stop.  I couldn't see where we were because Zoro was facing in the direction in which we had been traveling so I only attempted to see over my shoulder but didn't have much success.

"We have come to sacrifice your Beautiful and Fair Village Leader and Village Representative!" came the voice of one of the tiny men.  I swear, if I were a woman then I would be MUCH more attractive than Zoro.

"No need!" came the familiar voice of my beloved Nami-san.  She was trying to rescue me!  That meant that she was probably trying to fight off the Village Men as I sat here contemplating what she was doing!  I had to save her!!  I used my superior kicking abilities to destroy the cage and jump out.  Zoro was still tied to me since, after all, I hadn't exactly untied us and, even though I severely lack in upper body strength, I wasn't about to let his deadweight slow me down.

"Fear not, Nami-san!" I assured her as I began to kick each man.  "This tiny men shall plague you no longer."

Even if I had to kick each on individually into oblivion, I was going to rescue Nami-san.  Zoro was yelling at me, probably wanted to be untied but I could not multi-task while saving Nami-san.  She was much more important than he was.  Than he could EVER be.

It was going well, and I had nearly obliterated half of the population of men when I suddenly felt something hit me on the head.  In surprise, I fell to the ground and, unfortunately, since I was suspending Zoro in the air he fell on top of me as well.  So there I was, Zoro was on top of me AGAIN, but it's not like he minded or anything.  He probably liked it.  Knowing him.

"WHAT are you doing?!" Nami-san yelled at Zoro.  He had probably hit me.  And she was yelling at him for stopping me from saving her.  And he's crushing me.  That's what he's doing.

"What _am_ Idoing?!" he yelled, probably in disbelief that he had stopped me from performing an amazing feat.  Thankfully, he stood up and began having an argument with Nami-san.  I took that opportunity to look around at all the men who were rising from their collapsed positions on the ground.  Why were they so very resilient?  People can't usually just recover from my kicks.  Especially men of their size.

I saw them approaching.  They were probably angry or something, because one drew a knife.  I wasn't about to let him attack me OR Nami-san for that matter, so I kicked him away as hard as I could, and I watched as his little body turned into a speck off in the distance.  I momentarily felt incredibly satisfied that I had kicked him so very far, that I decided to make a game out of it.  They didn't seem to learn as they continuously stepped forward with their knives and I actually got to kicking them pretty far when one finally spoke up.

"We're TRYING to cut you free!" he said.

I knew he was lying, so I only scoffed at him.  But, upon scoffing, I saw that one was coming up behind me, in front of Zoro, and I was going to kick him as well but it was a weird angle and my legs just didn't bend that way.  And Zoro was to busy with his conversation with Luffy that he didn't even seem to notice the tiny man.

Suddenly, I fell to the ground.  The ropes had been cut, and the small men were all looking at me with concerned expressions.  I immediately reached for a cigarette and lit it since I had been deprived of my nicotine for quite some time now and felt as though I deserved a smoke.  So they were trying to cut us free the whole time.  People have made worse mistakes than that.  It happens to the best of us.

"Because you all helped us retrieve our Prince and Princess, we formally invite you to the wedding!!" exclaimed one of the men.

They didn't seem angry with me at all for kicking every single one of them at least once!  And I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to go to a wedding.  "Of course!" I said immediately.

I had to run off to the bathroom before the wedding, though, since I hadn't really gone all day.  First off, the toilet was about five feet of the ground.  And more importantly, there was no liftable seat cover.  It was just the ladies seat.  I don't know how they were expecting me to possibly use something like this, so I ended up just doing my business in the woods.

Upon my return, there was a party going on.  Apparently, I had missed the wedding during my bathroom break.  Oh well!  Time to drink and win Nami-san over!

I drank a lot and asked Nami-san to dance with me.  She said no, so I waited for her to drink a lot too.  Then I asked her to dance with me again, but she said no again.  So I got a bunch of drinks just for her and lined them all up so that when she walked by, I could give her some so that she'd dance with me.  But she didn't really walk by so I ended up just drinking them all by myself.

The only thing I could do that would get her to dance with me, is to make her jealous.  I walked up to one of the tiny men.  "Hey you, would you be so kind as to direct me to the most beautiful woman at this reception?" I requested.  "I would like to dance with her."

He pointed over in the corner to a girl with many green leaves in her hair.  I was going to take the little man's word on her being the most beautiful one since, I don't know, maybe it was foggy outside and I couldn't exactly see clearly.  When I got over to her, I said in my most suave voice, "Greetings, young lady, would you like to dance with me?"

She politely refused, explaining that she did not dance.  I didn't really want to dance with her anyway, since she had a really deep voice and that was just not normal.  So I was off on my way, back to a table.  I coolly took a sip of champagne and decided that it was late, and it was due time for a nice nap.

I woke up a little while later to find myself completely submerged under water.  I looked up to see that I was reasonably deep and did not know how I had gotten out to where I could possibly be that deep.

Suddenly, I saw a figure swimming towards me.  I couldn't quite make out who, or what, it was, but it grabbed onto me and pulled me to the surface.  The only thing that would have saved my life like that while being underwater, was a mermaid.

It was dark and my vision was blurry, so I couldn't quite make out exactly what she looked like but if she was a mermaid, that meant she was beautiful.  I squinted and then saw that she was the most beautiful mermaid in the world with green seaweed in her hair!  No, her hair _was _green!  It was like a dream come true because everyone knows that mermaids only reside in ALL BLUE!!

"Ah, a beautiful green haired mermaid has saved me!" I said.

She looked at me and I thought that maybe we would go into a deep embrace and kiss but instead, she hit me over the head, but in a very affectionate and charming way.  Perhaps that's how mermaids show their love.  And then I went to sleep again.


End file.
